Ray Waterhouse, Art Advisor

05/19/2026

06/12/2024

Four Contemporary picks from the first VIP day at Art Basel. This selection ranges in price from $20,000 to $400,000.

Contact me for details and further recommendations.

Sarah Lucas, Angel, 2022. This was featured in her show at Tate Modern.
Mario Joyce, Fragments of a Scattered Past, 2024
Maryam Hoseini, Cruel Alphabet, 2024
Ishi Glinsky, Gravitationally Stable under Particular Circumstances, 2024

06/12/2024

My top four Modern works from the VIP day at Art Basel, which proved again it’s the number one fair. It was super busy at the opening and very many good sales (including pre-fair sales) were reported. There was certainly not the buying frenzy of recent years, and the inside talk is that dealers will be open to negotiation on works not sold on the opening day.

Georges Braque at Acquavella. ‘Mandoline a la partition, 1941
Alberto Giacometti at Landau, ‘Portait of Diego’ 1953, stylishly displayed on an old door
Tom Wesselmann at Levy Gorvy, ‘Smoker #17, 1975
Pablo Picasso at Mitchell Innes and Nash, ‘Verre et Carte a Jouer’, 1914

06/10/2024

Unlimited in Basel is the best fair for monumental works. This fabulous painting by Sam Falls ‘Spring to Fall’ is 45 meters long.

06/10/2024

And this is supposed to be the early opening of Unlimited in Basel. Very busy and actually some great monumental works. More to follow.

05/08/2024

An important and profound painting by Andrew Wyeth – a real classic - at Sotheby’s on May 15th. It has a fascinating story.

Wyeth finished the composition when he was just 27 years old in 1944, and it was widely exhibited as ‘To the Westward’. In the early 70s Wyeth repainted it and changed many aspects, including the boat on the left, alluded to in the new title ‘Rum Runner’. He used the same the local fisherman, his friend Walter Anderson, but changed his pose and depicted him as he was then in 1974, 30 years later. (The early version is the third image)

Wyeth’s work is most well-known for his work in tempera, and a great n**e in tempera made $23 million in Paul Allen’s sale in 2022. The painting at Sotheby’s is conservatively estimated at $3 - $5 million.

Andrew Wyeth American.
1917 - 2009
Rum Runner (To the Westward)
tempera on panel
25 by 48 in. / 63.5 by 121.9 cm.
Executed in 1944 and reworked in 1974.

05/07/2024

A simply stunning painting of Roses by Renoir, being auctioned at Sotheby’s on May 15th.

Painted in 1879, when Renoir was at the height of his powers – his best works were executed between 1874 and 1882 – the beautiful colors of this work distinguish it from many of his flower studies which have more muted tones.

Personally, I think this work is better than his flower paintings in The Met and Musée d’Orsay. Third photo shows it hanging at Sothebys next to a Manet.

As Alexandra Murphy mentions in her essay for the Renoir Retrospective in Nagoya in 1988, “for an artist enamored with color, flowers provide a perfect subject—infinitely varied, malleable to any arrangement. Several of Renoir’s most beautiful paintings are indeed depictions of flowers: as still lifes, adorning portraits, embedded in landscapes. Renoir himself said that when painting flowers he was able to paint more freely and boldly, without the mental effort he made with a model before him”

It is fairly estimated at $2.5m - $3.5m.


Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1841-1919
Roses dans un vase de cristal
signed Renoir. (lower left)
oil on canvas
25 ¾ by 21 ½ in.
65.5 by 54.5 cm.
Executed circa 1879.

04/18/2024

A masterpiece by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco.

Stanhope was a second generation Pre-Raphaelite and so is considered much less important than Burne-Jones and Millais but this is a stunning painting.

03/21/2024

It was a proud moment when we had a collection of major Modern Masters in our private gallery/office a few years ago.

A client entrusted us to negotiate sales for works by Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, John Baldisseri, Agnes Martin and

03/07/2024

The well-dressed, well-heeled clientele waiting impatiently to get into TEFAF Maastricht 2024.

I feel a large part of my life has been spent in this massive hall, having exhibited 13 times and visited many more.

I’m now here to look on behalf of clients who await my reports and recommendations. Let’s see what treasures await.