A Peter Howson oil painting has sold for £40,000 at auction in Edinburgh.
The Sublime and the Ridiculous was produced in 1989, during his meteoric rise to fame.
The 8x7ft canvas, based on Howson's walks around Culzean Bay, Ayrshire, features the artist's iconic muscular man flanked by a dwarf making a fascist salute and a figure crucified upside down. It has been estimated to fetch up to £30,000 by Lyon & Turnbull, but was bought by an anonymous collector bidding via the telephone.
Charlotte Riordan, the auctioneer's paintings specialist, said interest in the "immense canvas" had come from across Europe, Russia, the USA and Far East.
She said: "We are delighted with the result. This artwork was painted by Howson in 1989, right in the midst of his stratospheric rise to fame."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article