# A new test for Uglow at Bonhams Canonical article: https://arthistory.news/news/a-new-test-for-uglow-at-bonhams-e510b157-6da9-48f5-93be-9d41c1a6bf9f By ArtHistory.News Published: 2026-10-24T10:50:13.621Z Palm Tree follows a record £793,600 sale at Christie’s, while a substantial group of Lowrys arrives as MK Gallery opens its reassessment of the painter. Euan Uglow’s Palm Tree \(1971\) will be offered at Bonhams on 18 November with an estimate of £100,000 to £150,000. Its appearance in the Modern British and Irish Art sale at New Bond Street follows a new auction record for the artist at Christie’s. The painting comes with a history stretching from Uglow’s studio to the Whitechapel Gallery and MK Gallery. The subject is a toy, given to Uglow by his friend Craigie Aitchison. With its plastic leaves and metal trunk, it supplied the ingredients for a miniature desert island, staged on a tabletop against a blue studio wall. Uglow painted the base a sandy colour and placed it on a square block; the patterned cloth beneath it and the exposed edges of the arrangement keep the illusion from becoming complete. There is a dry humour in the amount of scrutiny bestowed on this modest object. The palm promises an escape to somewhere exotic, while the painting keeps returning the eye to the apparatus of its making. Small measuring marks remain around the foliage. The blue opens out like sea and sky, then becomes a wall again. Uglow’s insistence on precision leaves room for play. That precision developed through his training at Camberwell and the Slade under William Coldstream. Months, sometimes years, could go into a single painting. His pictures preserve the marks of sustained observation, with intervals and proportions tested across the surface. According to Bonhams, the painting was bought directly from Uglow in 1971 by the present owner’s father and subsequently passed down within the family. It appeared in the Whitechapel Gallery’s 1974 retrospective and, more recently, in Catherine Lampert’s Euan Uglow: An Arc from the Eye at MK Gallery this spring. It also supplied the cover image for Andrew Lambirth’s The Uglow Papers, published in 2025. The immediate recent market comparison is Pyramid \(1993-96\), which Christie’s sold on 21 October for £793,600 including buyer’s premium. That equates to £620,000 at hammer, against an estimate of £300,000 to £500,000. The winning bid was therefore 24 per cent above the upper estimate, with the final price establishing a new auction record. Uglow’s auction history has advanced in substantial steps. In March 2007, Bonhams sold a small Still Life for £78,000, then a record for the artist. By November 2014, Christie’s had raised that figure to £602,500 with Three in One \(1967-68\). That record stood for almost twelve years. The new price for Pyramid is about 32 per cent higher in nominal sterling. A more immediate comparison for Palm Tree is Pink Potted Flowers on Cloth with Blue Design, painted around 1960, which Christie’s sold on 19 March for £171,450 including premium against an estimate of £40,000 to £60,000. MK Gallery provides a connection to another substantial presence in the Bonhams catalogue. Having shown Uglow from February to May, the Milton Keynes gallery opens L.S. Lowry: The Theatre of Life on 24 October, in the fiftieth anniversary year of Lowry’s death. Running until 28 February 2027, the exhibition ranges beyond his industrial landscapes to portraits, seascapes and surreal imagery. It also revisits the academic training obscured by the familiar story of the self-taught outsider. Bonhams’ Lowrys span more than three decades. A Lancashire Town \(1963\), lot 33, carries an estimate of £700,000 to £1 million, while the much earlier Excavations at Manchester \(1932\), lot 32, is expected to bring £500,000 to £800,000. The later Old Shot Tower, Newcastle-upon-Tyne \(1965\), lot 35, is estimated at £100,000 to £150,000, taking the geographical range beyond the Lancashire towns most closely associated with him. Between them comes The Orator \(1950\), lot 34, at £400,000 to £600,000. Its gathering around a speaker offers a particularly apt point of contact with The Theatre of Life. Bonhams describes the crowd as an audience engaged with a performance. Seen in that light, the painting invites attention to Lowry’s interest in public behaviour, as well as to the streets and buildings through which his figures move. 1 There is a further excursion to the North-East in People on a Promenade, South Shields, a 1969 drawing dedicated to Lawrence Ives. The seaside subject sits comfortably beside the exhibition’s wish to recover the variety of Lowry’s work. Palm Tree brings a painting from MK Gallery’s Uglow survey to auction less than a month after the Christie’s record. Bought directly from the artist and exhibited since the 1970s, it arrives with an established history of its own. ## Illustrations Euan Uglow \(British, 1932-2000\) Palm Tree signed and titled 'Euan Uglow/Palm Tree.' \(on an artist's label attached to the stretcher\) oil on canvas, 45.8 x 45.8 cm. \(18 x 18 in.\) Painted in 1971 Bonhams [Image source](). ## Sources - [ArtHistory.News editor: ArtHistory.News editor]() ## Related records - [L. S. Lowry]() Please cite the canonical article URL above. Image credits and reproduction rights remain with their respective holders.