Private collection of Yorkshire pictures head to auction

The first part of the collection was sold to great acclaim in a single owner sale at Tennants in 2021, in which a new auction record for a work by Frederick Cecil Jones was set.

To be sold in nearly sixty lots, the pictures on offer are just a small part of the collection built up over fifty years from the 1920s to the 1960s by Mr George G Hopkinson, a proud Yorkshireman and textile businessman who was a director of West Riding textile company Hopkinson and Shore and Bradford fashion house Novello’s.

George Hopkinson was no ordinary businessman. A man of strong Liberal convictions, he was deeply committed to the artistic and cultural life in Bradford and the West Riding of Yorkshire. He had a deep love of art and spent much of his time in the company of local artists in Yorkshire.

From 1929 to 1934 he became the editor of The Heaton Review, a "Northern Miscellany of Art and Literature" circulated in the parish of Heaton, Bradford. Not content to limit its articles to local matters, George invited and received contributions from the great and the good of British society including John Galsworthy, J B Priestley, George Bernard Shaw and Kenneth Grahame.

He also met Mahatma Gandhi during his tour of the north of England in 1931, and asked Gandhi to sign a recently completed portrait of him by the Leeds artist Jacob Kramer. A lithograph of the signed drawing is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. George later invited Gandhi to contribute to The Heaton Review, but by this time Gandhi was back in India and had been imprisoned in Poona (now Pune) so wrote a letter in reply from jail regretting that he was not permitted correspondence with newspapers and reviews.

Upon George Hopkinson’s death in 1969, his collection was divided between his second wife, Joan, and the families of his two sons, John and Gary. The paintings presented in this sale formed part of John Hopkinson’s estate. The collection is a legacy from a remarkable individual whose discerning eye played a significant role in promoting Yorkshire-based artists of his time.

One of the artists featured prominently in the collection is Bradford-born Frederick Cecil Jones (1891-1966), who is known for his closely observed and detailed paintings of Northern towns. In the sale are examples of his pictures of Ripon, York, Leeds, Bridlington, Keighley alongside his depiction of Tadcaster, which is offered for sale with an estimate of £800-1,200 (all figures exclude buyer’s premium).

Also represented in the sale are artists from the Castle Bolton school of painters, who based themselves in Wensleydale in the middle of the 20th century, including Fred Lawson, Jacob Kramer, and Philip Naviasky. Notable lots include Fred Lawson’s Caravan and Stalls at a Market Cross, possibly Redmire (estimate: £300-500), and Lee Gap (estimate: £250-400), Philip Naviasky’s Beach Scene with Figures in Deck Chairs and Donkeys (estimate: £250-400), and Jacob Kramer’s Portrait of a Lady (estimate: £500-800).

June 13 will be a celebration of Yorkshire art and antiques, as the sale will take place on the same day as Tennants’ landmark Mouseman: 150th Anniversary Sale.