Roar talent: £2.4m of Scottish art for sale

FROM the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists to a seething scene of Indian tigers by 51-year-old Scottish artist Peter Howson, Sotheby's unveils a line-up of Scottish pictures worth an estimated £2.4 million in Edinburgh today.

• Peter Howson's tableau Hotel Imperial - The Last Tigers is expected to fetch up to 50,000 at the Sotheby's Scottish sale in London

The works of the Glasgow Boys, based in and around the city from the late 19th century, have dominated the Scottish art scene this year.

Works by artists including Edward Arthur Walton and Arthur Melville will go under the hammer later this month at the auctioneers' Scottish sale in London.

Expected to fetch 30-50,000, Howson's Hotel Imperial - The Last Tigers, an eye-catching tableau two metres square that he painted after an abortive trip to India in 1999, headed the list of contemporary pictures.

Michael Grist, Sotheby's specialist in Scottish pictures, described it as a "tour-de-force".

There are about 150 lots in the Sotheby's Scottish sale, expected to fetch 2.4m between them. They are on exhibition at Edinburgh's Mansfield Traquair building until Thursday, before the London auction on 29 September.

They include some 20 works by Glasgow Boys artists, with Walton's landscape of Scotch pine trees, Rhymer's Hill, at an estimated value of 70-90,000, and Melville's watercolour Garnet Sails, of boats sailing near the Rialto Bridge in Venice, at 50-70,000.

Major exhibitions this year have raised public awareness of their work, Mr Grist said, although relatively few have reached the market.

Sotheby's is also showing a portrait by John Quinton Pringle, titled Man with Tobacco Pouch, of an elderly Glasgow character known as Kruger.

This week, the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery expects to welcome its 100,000th visitor to its landmark Glasgow Boys show, Pioneering Painters, which then transfers to London's Royal Academy in October.

The Fleming Collection of Scottish art also opens an exhibition in London today with some 50 Glasgow Boys works, including rarely seen classics by James Paterson and David Gauld.

The Scottish Colourists continue to be a major draw for collectors, after new record prices were set earlier this year, with Peploe's Still Life of Roses in a Blue and White Vase expected to sell for 250-350,000.

There has been a recent flood of Howson's work in Scottish auctions, much of it second-rate.Early this year the artist, whois autistic, handed his financial affairs to legal guardians, and his galleries have tried to reassert control of his huge output of paintings.

"We have four Howsons and they are all good examples, so hopefully the market will respond," said Michael Grist, Sotheby's specialist in Scottish pictures.

"There were definitely other Howsons around, but I think it is a case of saying, may be the next sale. The key is quality."