Sotheby’s will offer more than 60 works from the collection of the British entrepreneur and philanthropist David Ross this September in a single-owner sale titled This is Tomorrow: Works from the David Ross Collection. Bidding runs online from 7 to 15 September 2021, with an exhibition at Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries from 10 to 15 September.
Assembled since 2000, the collection focuses on British Pop and Contemporary art dating from 1965, the year Ross was born, onwards. The sale takes its title from a 1956 British art exhibition of the same name staged at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Many lots carry entry-level estimates, offering newer collectors a chance to acquire affordable works by leading names of the British art scene.
Highlights include a large-scale red interior by Tony Bevan, an abstract pastel by Sean Scully, a work by Gilbert & George, screenprints by Damien Hirst with titles such as ‘MEATBALLS’, ‘DUMPLING’ and ‘SANDWICH’, sky-scapes by Peter Newman, and a porcelain installation by Edmund de Waal.
Ross has said a lunch at Chatsworth House and a conversation with the late Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, first inspired him to focus his collection on British artists working within his own lifetime. Over more than twenty years he built relationships with nearly every artist whose work he acquired, among them Patrick Caulfield, Marc Quinn, Sir Peter Blake, Glenn Brown and Allen Jones.
Proceeds from the sale will benefit the David Ross Foundation, which since its inception in 2007 has given nearly £26 million to educational and cultural causes across the UK. In November 2020, Ross was named the buyer of David Hockney’s portrait of Sir David Webster, former chief executive of the Royal Opera House, which he acquired for £12.9 million, or 16.8 million dollars, pledging to return the painting to permanent display once the venue reopened.
Sotheby’s Made in Britain auction will run concurrently online from 7 to 15 September 2021.
(Press Release)
