Not for the first time, BBC1’s Antiques Roadshow featured an Austin Osman Spare item in yesterday’s programme. The significance of its appearance on the UK’s premier antiques television show should not be underestimated.
Of course, the expert had to mention Spare’s interest in the occult, his squalid living conditions and so on, but the piece – available via the BBC’s iPlayer application – was very favourable in its artistic assessment.
To view the whole programme, click here.
4.5
For anyone interested, the expert valued it at £6,000 to £8,000.
A friend sent me a link to this programme yesterday evening. It’s a wonderful picture. It’s probably film stars transcribed from a movie poster at the time (probably mid to late 1940s). The woman looks to me like Rita Hayworth, so this could be a poster for ‘Gilda’. However, the chap doesn’t lto my admittedly tired eyes ook a lot like Glenn Ford, her co-star in that film.
Whatever its origin, it’s a great picture in my opinion, and personally, given recent auction prices, I think the expert undervalued it