Peter Lanyon’s Cloud Base leads our picks from the Peter Simon collection
An rare early Ben Nicholson relief, an early carved Hepworth torso, Bomberg’s sensational Toledo and an Auerbach charcoal head give Christie’s October sale an exceptionally strong British contingent.
Updated
Christie’s will offer Peter Lanyon’s 'Cloud Base' (1962) in the Peter Simon collection evening sale in London on 14 October 2026. Alongside it are works by David Bomberg, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Frank Auerbach that make this a sale worth studying well beyond its headline prices. For the Monsoon and Accessorize founder, British modernism was an early collecting interest. These five works give a good account of its range, from the concentrated stillness of carved wood to a landscape apparently caught in mid-flight.
Painted in May 1962, 'Cloud Base' belongs to the years when gliding gave him a new way of understanding the Cornish landscape. He had begun flying in 1959. As the Courtauld’s research for its 2015 exhibition explained, the experience involved attending to the movements and forces of the air as well as the ground below. That matters here: the painting makes space feel mobile, with no comfortable place for the eye to settle.
Even in reproduction, its changes of pace are striking. Dark blue sweeps across the upper edge; a broad passage of white opens through the centre; red cuts sharply into the cooler colours. Curving marks turn back on themselves while longer strokes pull across the canvas. The pale blue below offers a moment of relative calm. Those shifts give the picture its exhilaration: the eye is carried, checked and redirected.
At six feet wide, this is a substantial canvas. Its reverse inscription fixes the month of its making, and Christie’s catalogue identifies a connection between its central motif and Lanyon’s 'Porthmeor Mura'l, on which he was working at the same time. Simon bought 'Cloud Base' at the Hiscox collection sale in 1998 for £56,500. Its present estimate is £450,000-£650,000
Bomberg’s sensational 'San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon' (1929) brings a more densely packed kind of movement. The tower rises among interlocking roofs, with the land beyond heaving into ridges under a narrow strip of sky. Russet, ochre and dark passages crowd together, but the town holds its structure. That tension between the energy of the brushwork and the solidity of the buildings is the picture’s strength. It is good as the artist gets from this period. It echoes his Vorticism of early years and is a prelude to what Auerbach would achieve later. A wonderful opportunity to buy one of the artist's great great works.
This is also a work with a substantial exhibition history: it appeared in Tate’s 1988 Bomberg retrospective. Like the Lanyon, it entered Simon’s collection at the Hiscox sale in December 1998. Christie’s estimates it at £800,000-£1.2 million. The two acquisitions suggest a collector responsive to paintings in which the act of looking remains palpable in the paint.
Nicholson’s rare '1934' (relief) asks for a slower adjustment. Its white surface is organised around stepped rectangular forms, a recessed circle and a small notch along the lower edge. Shadows supply much of the drawing. The circle has been cut into the wood, so its relationship to the surrounding surface changes with the light falling across it.
Christie’s places this among the earliest white reliefs. The hand-worked surface gives its geometry a welcome irregularity: one can recognise the discipline of the arrangement without losing sight of the carving. Bought directly from Nicholson in 1935 by Henri and Henriette Frankfort, it remained in their family until the 1987 sale recorded in the provenance. Simon acquired it in 1999 via Ivor Braka again. The estimate is £1 million-£1.5 million.
Hepworth’s 'Torso' (1929) offers another reason to look closely at wood. Carved in pyinkardo and just 32.4 cm high without its base, it has a compact, upright presence. The grain runs through the abdomen and thighs; the slight asymmetry of the shoulders prevents the body from becoming a diagram. Its economy gives each change of contour considerable weight.
It is a unique carving, an especially appealing distinction in a sale where the object’s material character matters so much. Christie’s identifies it as one of five torsos Hepworth made between 1927 and 1932, and the only wooden example of that group still privately owned. It was included in the recent 'Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life exhibition', which travelled from Wakefield to Edinburgh and St Ives. The estimate is £300,000-£500,000.
With Auerbach’s 'Head of Helen Gillespie' (1961), the surface becomes restless again. Charcoal, chalk and pastel give the face a pale, abraded intensity. The lowered eyelids and closed mouth establish a remarkable stillness within the surrounding marks. Then colour interrupts: a purple date at the upper left and red-orange strokes near the lower right. Those small accents make the darkness more varied and the head more insistently present. Christie’s estimates the drawing at £800,000-£1.2 million.
The connection with Bomberg is direct. Auerbach attended his drawing classes at Borough Polytechnic, and the Courtauld’s research identifies that teaching as formative. Its 2024 exhibition also stressed the status Auerbach gave these early charcoal heads, working and reworking them over months with the same seriousness as his paintings. That context helps explain the authority of this sheet. A drawing can hold its own in this company.
Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Evening Sale takes place at Christie’s London on 14 October 2026 at 6pm BST. The full collection is on view at 8 King Street from 26 September to 1 October, followed by a highlights exhibition from 8 to 14 October. All prices above are Christie’s auction estimates.
