Three Boty works to be sold in Modern British and Irish Art Sales at Christie’s London

The Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale starting at 6:00pm on 21 March includes Bum from 1966, and the next day on 22 March starting at 1:00pm the Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale includes two early works, Golden nude and Nude on the beach. All three can be viewed at 8 King St, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6QT from 14 March onwards.

The following images and details are all courtesy of Christie’s:

Pauline Boty (1938-1966), BUM, 1966. Pencil, ink, watercolour, gouache and collage on paper. © Christie’s Images Limited 2023

Details
PAULINE BOTY (1938-1966)
BUM
Pencil, ink, watercolour, gouache and collage on paper
19 5/8 x 16 in. (50 x 40.6 cm)
Executed in 1966

Provenance
A gift from the artist to Kenneth Tynan, and by descent

Exhibited
London, Gazelli Art House, “Silver Lining”, March–April 2019, exhibition not numbered

Estimate
GBP 60,000 – GBP 80,000

Auction details
LOT 1
Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale
21 MARCH 06:00 PM GMT | LIVE AUCTION 21948

Extract from Lot Essay
“Gifted by the artist to Kenneth Tynan in 1966, the present work has remained in his family ever since. Unprecedented in Boty’s limited body of work, this collage is the only known study for a major painting and provides a tantalising insight into her working methods. Executed in the same vibrant colours as the oil painting (sold Christie’s London, 22 November 2017, lot 4), the layers of collage reveal the complexity behind this playful composition.

BUM, a splendid and mature work, was Boty’s very last painting and painted after a diagnosis for cancer that ended her life so prematurely, aged only 28 in 1966. In the face of death, it is a wonderfully vibrant piece painted in colours straight from the tube. Commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for his notorious, erotic cabaret Oh! Calcutta! it places her, to the very end, at the cutting edge of the 60s zeitgeist. The title is a play on the French ‘O, quel cul tu as’ (‘O, what an arse you have’) and in a letter to the impresario, William Donaldson, Tynan outlined a gamut of ideas for the show, one of which was ‘a pop art ballet designed by Pauline Boty, based on paintings that focus on the principal erogenous zones’. BUM, intended as the first of a series, took its cue from the punning title. Within a precisely executed proscenium arch the female bottom is exquisitely and sensuously painted, the flesh has a bloom like a peach and the work could be read as a sensuous celebration of life. Yet the meaning is surely more ambiguous. We have a reified body part, set above the demotic title, BUM, rawly proclaimed in chunky san-serif lettering and revealed ‘on stage’ inviting perhaps a slap or a caning as much as a caress. Certainly, any simple celebration of sexual pleasure has been superseded by something more complex and interesting.

We are very grateful to Dr Sue Tate, author of Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman, Wolverhampton, 2013, for preparing this catalogue entry.”

Further information is available here: [link]

Pauline Boty (1938-1966), Golden nude, 1959. Oil on paper. © Christie’s Images Limited 2023

Details
PAULINE BOTY (1938-1966)
Golden nude
Signed and dated ‘BOTY. 59’ (lower right)
Oil on paper
23 1/2 x 17 1/4 in. (59.5 x 44 cm.)
Painted in 1959

Provenance
The artist, and by descent

Estimate
GBP 30,000 – GBP 50,000

Auction details
LOT 140
22 MARCH 01:00 PM GMT | LIVE AUCTION 21949
Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale

Further information is available here: [link]

Pauline Boty (1938-1966), Nude on the beach, c.1958-59. Gouache on paper. © Christie’s Images Limited 2023

Details
PAULINE BOTY (1938-1966)
Nude on the beach
Gouache on paper
19 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. (49.5 x 39.5 cm.)
Executed circa 1958-59.

Provenance
The artist, and by descent.

Estimate
GBP 30,000 – GBP 50,000

Auction details
LOT 141
22 MARCH 01:00 PM GMT | LIVE AUCTION 21949
Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale

Further information is available here: [link]

An essay on Boty entitled Pauline Boty: ‘She was beautiful, with this marvellous laugh: clever, very bright, very much the early feminist’ by Jessica Lack is also available here: [link]

Geoffrey Reeve’s photo of Pauline Boty shown for the first time

Pauline Boty in the Junior Common Room at the RCA, late 1960 or early 1961. © Geoffrey Raymond Reeve

Paulineboty.org is honoured to show the photo above for the first time. It was taken by Boty’s friend and fellow Royal College of Art student Geoffrey Reeve in the college’s Junior Common Room, which was originally on the first floor on the corner of Cromwell Place and Cromwell Road opposite the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.
Behind Boty can be seen John Watson and Alan Cooper of The Temperance Seven rehearsing. The 1920s-style jazz band, formed at the RCA during 1957, had a UK #1 hit single in 1961 with “You’re Driving Me Crazy” produced by George Martin followed by “Pasadena”, which reached #4. More information on them can be found here [link]

Early Boty study for stained glass sold at Christie’s

Earlier this month the gouache on card work, created by Boty when a student at the Royal College of Art, sold for double its high estimate. The following image and details are all courtesy of Christie’s:

Pauline Boty (1938-1966). Designs for stained glass window. Price realised GBP 20,000. Estimate GBP 7,000 – GBP 10,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2021

Produced in the first year of her studies at the RCA, this design already demonstrates Boty’s breadth of interests and talent for creative juxtapositions. The proportions and diptych arrangement seem made for church windows, but the content is far from ecclesiastical. Instead, the design features a dreamlike mix of architectural elements and a large letter ‘L’ framing figural elements including heads (painted frontally and in profile), and two lovers locked in an embrace. The assembly of disparate elements into a cohesive whole foreshadows Boty’s later Pop Art paintings and collages. It also reflects the influence of Charles Carey, who first taught Boty stained glass design at the Wimbledon Art School, and who encouraged students to use collage during the design process as a means of adding contemporary elements to an ancient artform.

Pauline Boty was a polymath who entered the Royal College of Art in 1958 to study stained glass design but became a leading light in the nascent Pop Art scene alongside contemporaries including Peter Blake and Derek Boshier. In this guise she produced paintings and collages which blended abstract elements with a profusion of imagery poached from pop culture, with surreal and often satirical results. She was also heavily involved with film and literature societies and agitated against some of the more egregious examples of contemporary architecture in London as a key organiser for the ‘Anti Uglies’.

Provenance
The artist’s family.
Private collection, London.
Purchased by the present owner at the 2016 exhibition

PAULINE BOTY (1938-1966)
Designs for stained glass window
gouache on card
9 ¼ x 3 in. (23.5 x 7.6 cm.) each
Executed circa 1958

Literature
Exhibition catalogue, Pop Art Heroes Britain, London, Whitford Fine Art, 2016, pp. 26–27, no. 13, illustrated

Exhibited
London, Whitford Fine Art, Pop Art Heroes Britain, May – July 2016, no. 13

New interview with Derek Boshier at paulineboty.org – extracts below:

Paulineboty.org: What were your first impressions when you met Pauline Boty?
Derek Boshier: My first impressions on meeting Pauline were the same as almost everybody. She was a very vivacious, glamorous intellectual. You know. And a lot of fun –the fact that she should have died so early aged 28… I mean, she loved life, you know – and she knew how to live it. She was just good to be around really. And that aspect of her, knowing how to live life, really fed her paintings too.

PBO: Did Pauline express her frustration at having to study stained glass instead of art as she’d originally wanted to?
DB: No. Mainly because she wasn’t a complainer. Politics though – Yes – but not her personal life. The Anti-Ugly March she organised for example, which I went on. She was the figurehead for that. The point about her is that she said her mind – not only in paintings with sensuality and sexuality, but she said it with architecture. I mean she was very direct.

PBO: And your painting “Pauline Boty Goes Digital [for Pauline Boty]”. How did that come about?
DB: Well it’s a very large painting that I made in 2011. You know, I always think of Pauline and what she did and I’m often reminded of her when people write to me and ask me about her or “Pop Goes the Easel” and I remember my friendship with her. I was about to start a new series of paintings about smartphones and I just thought before I do that I’d like to do a homage to Pauline as it were, just to help keep her in people’s memory really.

Full interview here: [link]

Early Pauline Boty painting discovered!

Untitled by Pauline Boty, 1959, oil on card laid on canvas. 69 x 51 cm — Untitled, 1959, oil on card laid on canvas. 69 x 51 cm

Dating from Boty’s time at the RCA [Royal College of Art] this untitled work has hints of the sensuality she would develop further with some of her key Pop art paintings, but with a palette of autumnal hues she rarely used again. The work is of oil on card laid on canvas and at 69 x 51 cm is large compared to most other surviving works from the period. Excitingly and very unusually it is also prominently signed and dated “Boty.59” on the front.

For further details please enquire using the Contact form or via info@paulineboty.org

Detail of signature and date on recently discovered painting by Pauline Boty. — A rare example of a work by Boty signed and dated on the painting itself.