Andrew Cranston
GrowthEgon research · Artist market profile
The market, in context.
Explore Andrew Cranston’s auction history alongside the exhibitions, collections and gallery relationships behind the market.
Institutional research
Collections & exhibitions
Read holdings, exhibition history and their qualifications in context.
Read the institutional research →
Egon investment scores
Market position
Research updated
Recent auction highlight
A result from Egon’s tracked auction sales; historical auction records are researched separately. Price including buyer’s premium.
Pricing
By work type
- Prints and multiples
- Glasgow Print Studio presented a print project for Glasgow International 2026; edition prices not disclosed in sources checked
Medium and large canvases / board paintings
$44,000-$111,000 at auction in 2026 (Cezanne's Cheese Board $44,333; Sink - Osborne Street $55,934; Now Its Come to Distances $54,731; Meditation in a tenement $110,833)
- Small works on hardback book covers (approx 20-30 cm)
- $25,000-$81,000 at auction (Salad Days, 22 x 28.7 cm, $81,004 at Christie's 2024; an untitled work at $25,577, Phillips Jun 2026)
Primary market
Gallery-controlled and not publicly disclosed. Artnet shows 2024-2025 Ingleby Gallery inventory marked 'Sold' or 'Reserved' rather than priced - the signature of a waitlisted, allocation-managed primary market. Contact Ingleby Gallery (Edinburgh), Modern Art (London/Paris) or Karma (New York/LA) for current primary pricing; expect primary levels below recent auction results for comparable works, which is the usual source of flipping supply.
- Disclosure flag
- Recent primary sales show no published prices - gallery-controlled market.
Temporal context
- 2024
- $81,004 (Salad Days, Christie's London) - the externally reported record, set on a small book-cover work.
2020-2023
Market forming. Lots begin appearing at Phillips London (e.g. 'Jason', March 2023). MutualArt's reported low end (hundreds of dollars) sits in this era and covers minor works.
2025-2026
$25,577-$110,833 across five sales at Phillips and Sotheby's in our database, all in 2026, each at or above high estimate on a premium-inclusive basis.
- Pre-2018 (pre-Ingleby breakout)
- Effectively no secondary market; work sold through regional Scottish gallery channels. No auction records located from this period.
Liquidity
- Depth
- Thin. Concentrated at Phillips London, with Christie's London and Sotheby's participating. No New York evening-sale presence identified.
- Assessment
- Demand comfortably exceeds auction supply, but total volume is low - exit is possible, though price discovery rests on a handful of comparables.
- Sell through
- 100% of settled lots in our internal database; no unsold lots identified externally.
Annual volume
Roughly 5-8 lots per year at the major houses at current run-rate (five recorded in our database across Mar-Jun 2026 alone); approximately 17 lifetime lots per MutualArt.
Collector base
Pattern
Tastemaker collectors from fashion (Anderson), broadcasting (Tovey) and blue-chip private collections (Pinault, Hall), plus Asian institutional/private collections (He Art Museum, H+ Suzhou). A curated, reputation-driven buyer base rather than a speculative one.
Named and reported
- Pinault Collection, Paris - listed by Modern Art among collections holding the work (gallery-attributed, not independently confirmed)
- Hall Art Foundation, Vermont - listed by Ingleby/MICAS (private foundation, not a public museum)
- Loewe Foundation, Madrid; Unilever Collection, London - listed by MICAS and Ingleby respectively
- Jonathan Anderson (JW Anderson) - funded the Hepworth Wakefield acquisition through the JW Anderson Collections Fund and co-curated the 2025 Pier Arts Centre exhibition with Richard Ingleby
- Russell Tovey - collector-curator who included Cranston in 'Swimming' at GRIMM, Amsterdam (Nov 2024 - Jan 2025)
- Ryan Taylor Collection and the Roden Family listed among major supporters of the Hepworth Wakefield exhibition
Auction history
Overview
A young secondary market. MutualArt lists 17 works at auction and artnet shows 10 auction results, consistent with a market that only began trading in volume after the 2018-19 Ingleby/Karma breakout. Depth is thin; sell-through is exceptionally high.
Bought in lots
No bought-in or unsold Cranston lots were identified in the sources checked. This is not evidence of a 100% lifetime sell-through; no complete offered-vs-sold ledger was surfaced.
Internal data caveat
Our database summary states 'Total lots: 4' and '100% sell-through across 5 settled lots' while listing five distinct 2026 sales. The lot count is internally inconsistent; we report the five named sales as given and do not reconcile the count.
Record reconciliation
MutualArt's stated record ($81,004, Salad Days, Christie's London 2024) is LOWER than our database's $110,833 for 'Meditation in a tenement' (Phillips, Jun 2026). Reported separately, not merged: the likely explanation is that the MutualArt summary omits the 2026 results, but the 2026 figure was not independently verified against a Phillips results page.
Price range reported externally
MutualArt reports realised prices across his auction history ranging from roughly $65 to $81,004 - the low end reflects minor works or multiples rather than paintings.
Market position
- Segment
- Upper end of the emerging/mid-career contemporary painting segment; six-figure ceiling, five-figure core.
Demand signal
Every 2026 result in our database cleared its high estimate on a premium-inclusive basis; 'Sink - Osborne Street' (Apr 2026) at roughly double the high estimate.
Peer comparables
Trades within the cohort of UK/Northern European narrative and intimist figurative painters repriced from 2019 onward - Caroline Walker, France-Lise McGurn, Henni Alftan and adjacent narrative painters. Cranston's ceiling (~$111k) sits well below the $1M+ names in that cohort while his institutional record is comparatively strong - the core of the case for him.
Investment outlook
Risks
- Very thin comparable set - one weak result moves the perceived level materially
- Concentration in day sales at one house (Phillips)
- Auction levels now sit above plausible primary pricing, inviting flipping supply
- Several collection claims rest on gallery-published lists rather than verified museum records
- Artist reached visibility late (age ~49), so the market has not been tested through a full downturn
Target entry
Best risk-adjusted entry is the primary market through Ingleby, Modern Art or Karma at pre-auction levels, accepting a waitlist. At auction, book-cover works below ~$50,000 and mid-size board paintings below ~$60,000 are defensible; above roughly $110,000 a buyer is paying the current record on a five-lot comparable base.
Position and timing
Suitable as a single-work, conviction-sized position rather than a stacked one. The live catalysts are institutional (Tate Modern display, UK museum touring, a Lucerne career survey) rather than promotional, which favours holding through at least one full cycle (5+ years) over trading the current momentum.
Trajectory observed
Auction prices moved from an externally reported $81k record in 2024 to $110,833 in June 2026 per our database, with consistent above-estimate clearing. That is measured behaviour across a small sample, not a modelled return.
Scenario not forecast
IF the 2026 Modern Art London solo, the Holburne/Pier Arts touring show and the Tate Modern display are followed by further first-rank acquisitions, book-cover works plausibly consolidate in a $60k-$120k band and large canvases test $150k+. This is a conditional scenario resting on the 2026 comparables above and on continued institutional uptake - not a measured appreciation rate. The comparable base (five to ten meaningful lots) is too thin to support a credible CAGR.
Institutional presence
Research updated
Biennials
No biennial or triennial selection identified in the sources checked. Glasgow International 2026 is a city-wide festival presentation via Glasgow Print Studio, not a curated biennial selection.
Exhibitions
Solo gallery
Scroll horizontally if needed →
| Note | Dates | Title | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Third solo with the gallery; in Modern Art's new St James's space | 18 April - 30 May 2026 | I'm going in a field | Modern Art, 8 Bennet Street, London |
| Not supplied | 13 October - 16 November 2024 | Thoughts from under the floorboards | Modern Art, Paris |
| Glasgow-centred body of work | 25 July - 14 September 2024 | One day this will be a long time ago | Karma, Los Angeles |
| Accompanied by 'Andrew Cranston: Never a Joiner', eds. R. and F. Ingleby, Edinburgh 2023 | 17 June - 16 September 2023 | Never a joiner | Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh |
| Reviewed in Artforum | 2022 | If you see something that doesn't look right | Modern Art, London (Mayfair) |
| Breakout exhibition | 27 October - 21 December 2018 | But the dream had no sound | Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh |
Selected group
Scroll horizontally if needed →
| Dates | Title | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| 21 January - 21 March 2026 | Lord Arthur Savile's Crime | Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly Street, London |
| 25 April - 25 October 2026 | Salon, curated by Matthew Higgs | Lismore Castle Arts, Co. Waterford, Ireland |
| 21 February - 31 May 2026 | In the Company of Still Life | ArtYard, Frenchtown, New Jersey |
| 16 April - 23 June 2026 | Drawing Biennial 2026 | Drawing Room, London |
| 1 February - 19 April 2025 | Wings of a Butterfly | Ingleby, Edinburgh |
| 28 November 2024 - 11 January 2025 | Swimming, curated by Russell Tovey | GRIMM, Amsterdam |
| 2023 | The Moth and the Thunderclap | Modern Art, London |
| 2023 | The Inner Island | Villa Carmignac / Fondation Carmignac, Ile de Porquerolles |
| 3 November - 22 December 2023 | The Painted Room, curated by Caroline Walker | GRIMM, Amsterdam |
| 28 January - 1 April 2023 | TWENTY-FIVE | Ingleby, Edinburgh |
| 2022 | Dreamhome | Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
| 2022 | Group presentation | Royal Academy of Arts, London |
| 2019 | Group exhibition | Jerwood Gallery, Hastings |
| date not established in sources checked | Group exhibition | H+ Art Museum, Suzhou |
| date not established in sources checked | East International | Norwich |
Solo museum and public
What made you stop here?
- Note
- First solo exhibition in a UK public institution; 38 paintings from large canvases to book-cover works, focused on work post-2016
- Dates
- 25 November 2023 - 2 June 2024
- Venue
- The Hepworth Wakefield
Dreams of the Everyday (with Winifred Nicholson)
- Note
- Curated by Richard Ingleby and Jonathan Anderson; book co-published by 5b and Ingleby
- Dates
- Summer 2025
- Venue
- Pier Arts Centre, Orkney
Dreams of the Everyday (touring)
- Note
- MutualArt noted the work as currently on show at the Holburne
- Dates
- opened October 2025
- Venue
- The Holburne Museum, Bath
Painting, our mutual... (print project)
- Dates
- 2026
- Venue
- Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow International Festival
Upcoming and current as of sept 2026
One exhibition listed as running past this date: 'Salon' at Lismore Castle Arts (to 25 October 2026). No announced 2026-27 museum solo or scheduled single-owner auction offering was identified in the sources checked.
Publications
Andrew Cranston: Never a Joiner
- Note
- Cited in the Christie's 'Salad Days' lot literature (p. 66, illustrated p. 67)
- Editors
- R. Ingleby and F. Ingleby
- Place year
- Edinburgh, 2023
Book accompanying 'Dreams of the Everyday' (Cranston / Winifred Nicholson)
- Year
- 2025
- Publisher
- Co-published by 5b and Ingleby
The Hepworth Wakefield exhibition materials and podcast (Season 19, Ep. 7)
- Year
- 2023-24
Collections caveat
Only the Tate holding (accession number and work title on Tate's own site) and the Hepworth Wakefield acquisition (museum's own news release) are independently documented. The LACMA, NGS, AGNSW, ICA Miami and Portland listings all trace to gallery-published biographies recycled by press outlets; they remain attributed until checked against each museum's collection database.
Museum collections
I take sugar with tea (afternoon tea), 2023, accession T16310
- Tier
- First-rank (national collection of British and international modern/contemporary art)
Credit line
credit line unknown - the rendered Tate artwork page we retrieved did not display an acquisition tombstone or credit line in the returned text; we do not infer that Tate publishes none
- Institution
- Tate, London
Status note
Confirmed on Tate's own artist and artwork pages. Currently on display at Tate Modern in the display 'In the Studio: Painting the Figure in the 21st Century'.
A snake came to my coffee table on a hot, hot day to drink there, 2023
- Tier
- Major UK regional collecting museum
Credit line
credit line unknown - the museum's news announcement describes the work as the second acquired for Wakefield's collection through the JW Anderson Collections Fund; a formal published credit line was not retrieved (the page could not be fetched directly before the fetch-tool limit was reached)
- Institution
- The Hepworth Wakefield
Acquisition route
Purchase through a named acquisition fund - the JW Anderson Collections Fund, a GBP 50,000 annual fund awarded to a UK collecting institution to acquire works by artists under-represented in UK collections, of which The Hepworth Wakefield was the inaugural recipient in February 2023. A named fund plus the museum's own announcement supports curatorial initiation rather than a passive gift.
National Galleries of Scotland / Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
- Tier
- National museum (Scotland)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - holding listed in gallery biographies (Modern Art, Ingleby); not verified against the NGS collection database
- Status note
- Gallery-attributed
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
- Tier
- First-rank encyclopedic museum
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - listed by Modern Art and repeated by HENI and Emergent Magazine; not verified on LACMA's own collection database
- Status note
- Gallery-attributed, repeated by third-party press
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- Tier
- Major state/national museum (Australia)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
- Status note
- Cranston exhibited there in the group show 'Dreamhome' (2022), consistent with but not proof of an acquisition
View 10 more records
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
- Tier
- Contemporary collecting museum (US)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
- Tier
- Major US regional museum
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
- Tier
- National academy collection (Scotland)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
Royal College of Art, London
- Tier
- Art school collection
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
Hawick Museum, Scottish Borders
- Tier
- Local/regional museum (the artist's birthplace)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
He Art Museum, Shunde, China
- Tier
- Private museum (China)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
H+ Art Museum, Suzhou, China
- Tier
- Private museum (China)
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed; he has also shown there in a group exhibition
Hall Art Foundation, Vermont
- Tier
- Private foundation - NOT a public accessioning museum for scoring purposes
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - gallery-attributed
Pinault Collection, Paris
- Tier
- Private collection - not a public museum
- Credit line
- n/a - private collection, listed by Modern Art
Loewe Foundation, Madrid; Unilever Collection, London
- Tier
- Corporate/foundation collections - not public museums
- Credit line
- credit line unknown - listed by MICAS and Ingleby respectively
Awards and recognition
- Year
- 2014
- Award
- Arts Foundation fellowship, associated with the Royal Scottish Academy
- Note
- Curatorial engagement by Tate beyond the acquisition
- Year
- not established
- Recognition
- Tate Britain 'Paint Club' panellist - selected Sickert's 'Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford' from the Tate collection
- Note
- Academic standing rather than a prize
- Recognition
- Lecturer in Painting, Gray's School of Art, 1997-2017
Career & Biography
Research updated
Identity
- Birth
- 22 July 1969, Hawick, Scottish Borders, Scotland
- Gender
- Male
- Status
- Living artist, mid-career
- Full name
- Andrew Cranston
- Nationality
- Scottish (British)
- Current base
- Lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland
Personal
Three children; his partner is also a painter (per Wikipedia). Raised in Hawick; Glasgow has been home for roughly twenty-seven years as of the 2024 Karma LA show, and the city is explicit subject matter in that body of work.
Education
Scroll horizontally if needed →
| Years | Institution | Qualification | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| exact years not established in sources checked | Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen (Robert Gordon University) | BA, Painting | Not supplied |
| Not supplied | Royal College of Art, London | MA, Painting | Taught there by Peter Doig and Adrian Berg, per the Hepworth Wakefield artist podcast biography |
Career timeline
Event
Lecturer in the Painting department at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen - a twenty-year academic career parallel to, and initially ahead of, his exhibiting career
- Period
- 1997-2017
- Event
- Arts Foundation fellowship associated with the Royal Scottish Academy (per Wikipedia); first substantive national recognition
- Period
- 2014
Event
Transition to full-time painting; 'But the dream had no sound', Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (27 Oct - 21 Dec 2018) is the breakout exhibition and the source of his most-cited work
- Period
- 2017-2018
Event
International gallery expansion - Karma (New York) and Modern Art (London); group inclusion at the Royal Academy, London (2022) and 'Dreamhome', Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2022)
- Period
- 2019-2022
Event
Institutional breakthrough: first solo exhibition in a UK public institution, 'What made you stop here?', The Hepworth Wakefield (25 Nov 2023 - 2 June 2024), 38 paintings; Tate acquisition; solo shows at Karma Los Angeles and Modern Art Paris (2024)
- Period
- 2023-2024
Event
'Dreams of the Everyday' (with Winifred Nicholson), Pier Arts Centre, Orkney (summer 2025), touring to The Holburne Museum, Bath from October 2025; Glasgow Print Studio presentation for Glasgow International 2026; third solo with Modern Art, London, 'I'm going in a field', 18 April - 30 May 2026
- Period
- 2025-2026
Studio practice
Works in Glasgow, largely at intimate scale on the linen-bound covers of second-hand hardback books alongside large canvases. Process-led rather than pre-conceived: layering, varnishing/lacquering, bleaching and collaging, reworking until the image coalesces. Titles frequently carry anecdote or a specific address (e.g. 'Sink - Osborne Street').
Influences and context
Literary
- Franz Kafka - e.g. 'Illustration for a Franz Kafka story (2nd version)' (2007), depicting Gregor Samsa's bedroom
- Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton-style deadpan comedy, per the Ingleby-submitted Artsy biography
Art historical
- Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard (Nabi intimism) - named in the Artforum review as his most obvious models
- Walter Sickert - Cranston selected Sickert's 'Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford' for a Tate Britain Paint Club event
- Winifred Nicholson - paired with Cranston in the 2025 Pier Arts Centre / Holburne two-person exhibition
- Peter Doig and Adrian Berg as RCA teachers
Contemporaries
- Caroline Walker, France-Lise McGurn, Lucy McKenzie (Scottish/Glasgow-linked figurative painters Tate groups him with)
- Karma stablemates Henni Alftan, Mathew Cerletty, Matthew Wong, Nicolas Party
Getty record assessment
The Getty ULAN record (ID 500720401: 'Cranston, Andrew', Scottish painter, 1969-) is CONFIRMED and is not a name-collision. Wikipedia and Tate's own artist page both give a 1969 birth year; gallery and museum biographies (Modern Art, Ingleby, Hepworth Wakefield) consistently give Hawick 1969 with a Glasgow base. The only expansion on Getty is the precise birth date (22 July 1969) and birthplace. No contradiction found on nationality, role or dates.
Political social engagement
No organised activism documented in sources checked; his social content is class- and place-specific (tenement interiors, Glasgow domesticity) rather than declaratively political.
Artistic Profile
Research updated
Style
Intimist figuration in which image and support are worked together: thin oil washes and varnish layers over linen or book cloth, with the weave and the object's own edges functioning as tone and frame. Space is flattened and permeable, figures are often translucent or half-present, and the picture reads as recollection rather than observation. Alternates between hazy stained passages and heavily accreted impasto surfaces, and between palm-sized book covers and large canvases.
Evolution
1994-2016: long developmental period alongside teaching at Gray's, including the literary-room paintings of the 2000s. 2016-2018: emergence of the mature book-cover format and the varnish-and-bleach surface, consolidated in 'But the dream had no sound' (2018). 2019-2024: scaling up to large canvases and threshold compositions while retaining the miniatures; institutional uptake. 2025-2026: Glasgow-specific and still-life-driven work, plus a first career survey.
Influences
- Bonnard, Vuillard, Sickert, Winifred Nicholson
- Peter Doig and Adrian Berg (RCA teachers)
- Literary: Kafka, Beckett; cinematic: Buster Keaton
Visual language
Warm, desaturated earth-toned palettes; soft edges and dissolved contours; compressed, tipped-up interior space; single-colour-dominated landscape apertures; small objects rendered opaquely against thinned grounds; humour and menace introduced through a single incongruous element.
Themes and subjects
- Memory and its unreliability; autobiography treated as unstable material
- Domestic interiors - tenements, bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, often tied to a named Glasgow address
- Rooms described in literature (Kafka, and literary anecdote generally)
- Deadpan comedy and pathos of ordinary life - the Beckett/Keaton register cited in his gallery biography
- Intrusion of the alien into the familiar (a snake over a child's cot)
- Still life, landscape and seascape at the margins of the domestic
Movements and periods
- Contemporary British/Scottish figurative painting
- Intimism / post-Nabi lineage (Bonnard, Vuillard)
- Camden Town / Sickert interior tradition
- Twenty-first-century narrative painting revival
Techniques and mediums
- Oil and varnish on hardback book cover (signature format)
- Oil on canvas at large scale
- Oil on board
- Layering, lacquering, bleaching, collage, scumbling, glazing, dry-brush, incised linear marks
- Printmaking - Glasgow Print Studio project for Glasgow International 2026
Fingerprint verification
Confirmed
- Representational / Nabi register and Contemporary period labelling: CONFIRMED - Artforum explicitly names Vuillard and Bonnard as his models, the Nabi lineage the fingerprint detected.
- Mediums oil and painting; techniques scumbling, glazing, alla prima: CONSISTENT with documented practice.
- Moods contemplative and intimate; themes memory, the everyday, domestic life, narrative: STRONGLY CONFIRMED - Frieze reads the paintings as hazy memories; the Ingleby-submitted Artsy text foregrounds memory's unreliability and autobiography; the Tate holding is a domestic tea scene.
- Formal terms flatness, intimate-scale, soft edges, warm/desaturated/earth-tone palettes: CONFIRMED, with a concrete material cause for the intimate scale (see additions).
- The two divergent narrative poles in the fingerprint (thin-wash intimism vs heavy-impasto 'Sink - Osborne Street') are supported by the sources - the low coherence reflects genuine breadth of handling, not misattribution.
Corrections and additions
- PERIOD BRACKET '1990-2010' IS MISLEADING for the traded body of work. Documented market and museum works cluster 2016-2025 (the Hepworth show explicitly focused on post-2016 work); 1990s-2000s material is rare at auction.
- MISSING SIGNATURE TRAIT - THE SUPPORT. His single most distinctive material decision is painting on the linen-bound covers of second-hand hardback books (e.g. 'Salad Days', 22 x 28.7 cm, oil and varnish on hardback book cover). This explains the intimate-scale and flatness signals and is the key attribution and pricing variable; the fingerprint does not name it.
- MISSING - VARNISH, BLEACH AND COLLAGE AS ACTIVE MEDIA. Sources describe layering, lacquering, bleaching and collaging, not only scumbling and glazing. 'Oil and varnish' is the standard catalogue medium line.
- MISSING - LITERARY SOURCE MATERIAL. A recurring practice is painting rooms described in fiction (e.g. 'Illustration for a Franz Kafka story (2nd version)', 2007, Gregor Samsa's bedroom). The 'narrative' tag under-specifies this.
- MISSING - THRESHOLD COMPOSITIONS. Artforum describes large canvases staged on thresholds (terrace, garden, door, window) opening onto single-colour-dominated landscapes with wraithlike presences - a compositional type distinct from the interior still life.
- MISSING - NAMED-ADDRESS TITLING. Titles carry specific Glasgow addresses and anecdote ('Sink - Osborne Street', 'Meditation in a tenement'), a consistent conceptual device.
Signature series and works
- But the dream had no sound (2018) - breakout body of work
- Book-cover miniatures (ongoing) - e.g. 'Salad Days' (2020), 'The Apartment (Tell-tale heart)' (2024)
- A snake came to my coffee table on a hot, hot day to drink there (2023) - The Hepworth Wakefield
- I take sugar with tea (afternoon tea) (2023) - Tate, on display at Tate Modern
- Named-address interiors, e.g. 'Sink - Osborne Street'
- Egon-identified centroid works, plausible and retained: 'That Magic Feeling, Nowhere to Go', 'Now Its Come to Distances', 'A Room Remembered', 'Sink - Osborne Street'
Critical Reception
Research updated
Critical reception
Summary
Cranston has genuinely favourable, non-promotional critical attention in tier-1 outlets, centred on memory, literary borrowing and the oddness of the domestic. Reviews consistently position him against Bonnard, Vuillard and Sickert rather than against his market peers.
Key reviews
Note
Calls him a midcareer artist and names Vuillard and Bonnard as his most obvious models; describes large threshold canvases - terrace, garden, door, window - each opening onto a landscape dominated by one glowering colour, with thinly rendered wraithlike presences
- Subject
- 'If you see something that doesn't look right', Modern Art, London
- Publication
- Artforum
Note
Reads the paintings as already-hazy memories punctuated by details drifting in from other contexts; describes the show's 38 works, quiet interiors and warping landscapes
- Subject
- 'What made you stop here?', The Hepworth Wakefield
- Publication
- Frieze
- Note
- Describes the first public-institution solo as long overdue and flags the newly acquired snake painting as a highlight
- Subject
- Hepworth Wakefield exhibition and interview with Edward Behrens
- Publication
- Apollo
- Note
- Cited by Wikipedia as outlets in which his work has been reviewed and discussed; individual articles not retrieved in this research
- Subject
- General coverage
- Publication
- The Guardian; The Spectator
Lists and features
No 'artists to watch' / 'new talent' list inclusion or magazine cover feature was identified in the sources checked. His editorial profile is review- and interview-led (Artforum, Frieze, Apollo, The Art Newspaper, Ocula, Talk Art, the Hepworth Wakefield podcast) rather than discovery-list driven - appropriate to a painter who reached visibility at around fifty.
Scholarly attention
Limited independent scholarship. The principal literature is exhibition-linked: 'Andrew Cranston: Never a Joiner' (eds. R. and F. Ingleby, 2023) and the 5b/Ingleby book for 'Dreams of the Everyday' (2025), both gallery-associated, plus Hepworth Wakefield exhibition materials. No monograph independent of commercial sponsorship and no catalogue raisonne identified.
Publications and media
- Type
- Artist and exhibition record
- Outlet
- Ocula
Note
MutualArt records these outlets as having featured him; the most recent noted item is a September 2025 FAD Magazine piece on Modern Art's new London space
- Type
- News coverage
- Outlet
- The Art Newspaper, ArtDaily, FAD Magazine
- Type
- Exhibition news on the 2026 Modern Art London solo
- Outlet
- HENI
- Type
- Long-form artist interview
- Outlet
- Talk Art podcast (Acast)
- Type
- Studio interview recorded in Glasgow
- Outlet
- The Hepworth Wakefield podcast, Season 19 Ep. 7
- Type
- Feature on Modern Art Paris
- Outlet
- Emergent Magazine
Art historical positioning
Positioned within a revived British narrative/intimist painting lineage - Sickert and the Camden Town interior, Bonnard and Vuillard's dissolved domestic space - updated through process-driven surface and literary source material. Tate's own related-works grouping places him beside John Bellany, Callum Innes, Lucy McKenzie, France-Lise McGurn and Caroline Walker, i.e. within a Scottish/British painting cohort rather than an international market cohort.
Gallery & Representation
Research updated
Fair presence
No specific Cranston art-fair booth was confirmed in the sources checked. His galleries (Ingleby, Karma, Modern Art) are regular exhibitors at Frieze London, Art Basel and comparable fairs, so fair exposure is very likely but not documented here.
Representation
Galleries
Ingleby Gallery
Note
Longest-standing representation and the source of most auction provenance (e.g. Christie's 'Salad Days'); Richard Ingleby co-curated the 2025 Pier Arts Centre exhibition and co-edited the 2023 monograph
- Tier
- 1
- Since
- 2018
- Status
- current
- Location
- Edinburgh, Scotland
Karma
- Note
- Roster includes Nicolas Party, Matthew Wong, Henni Alftan, Thaddeus Mosley - a strong US market channel
- Tier
- 2
- Since
- by 2018-2019
- Status
- current
- Location
- New York (East Village) and Los Angeles
Modern Art
- Note
- Three solo presentations: London 2022, Paris 2024, London 2026
- Tier
- 2
- Since
- 2022
- Status
- current
- Location
- London (8 Bennet Street, St James's) and Paris
Phillips
- Note
- Maintains an artist page and actively invites consignments; the dominant secondary venue for his work
- Tier
- 2
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- London / global
Christie's
- Note
- Sold 'Salad Days' in 2024
- Tier
- 2
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- London
Sotheby's
- Note
- Sold 'Now Its Come to Distances' in March 2026 per our internal database
- Tier
- 2
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- London / global
GRIMM
- Note
- Included Cranston in curated group shows (2023, 2024) without representing him
- Tier
- 1
- Status
- secondary
- Location
- Amsterdam / New York
Geographic reach
UK (Edinburgh, London), France (Paris), USA (New York, Los Angeles), with collection and exhibition reach extending to Australia, China, Spain, Ireland and Switzerland.
Representation history
Regional Scottish base and a twenty-year teaching career until the 2018 Ingleby breakout; US representation (Karma) followed within about a year, then Modern Art from 2022. A three-gallery structure across Scotland, London/Paris and the US is unusually robust for an artist at this price level and is the main reason supply is tightly controlled. No dropped or former representation identified.
Sources & research notes
Egon’s artist research combines historical auction records, recent sales, institutional history, critical reception and gallery information. Researched auction records and auction highlights are identified separately.
Read prices with their work, sale date, currency and stated basis. Egon’s market assessments are distinct from reported auction results.
Reference: Egon, “Andrew Cranston: Market Intelligence & Investment Profile.”
Evidence & qualifications
These notes preserve the sources, status and qualifications recorded in the research.
MutualArt reports the artist's record price since 2020 as $81,004 for 'Salad Days', sold at Christie's London in 2024, with realised prices across his auction history ranging from about $65 to $81,004.
Market · Reported · Event: 2024 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Aggregator summary, not an auction-house result page. The same page says his work is currently shown at the Holburne Museum (opened Oct 2025), yet still gives a 2024 record - it may not incorporate the 2026 Phillips/Sotheby's results in our database.
https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Andrew-Cranston/068D7EB1A067F22D'Salad Days' (2020) is oil and varnish on hardback book cover, 22 x 28.7 cm, offered as lot 403 at Christie's, provenance Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh then a European private collection.
Market · Documented · Event: 2024 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Object description and provenance taken from the Christie's lot listing content surfaced in search; a direct fetch of the lot page failed (fetch-tool usage limit), so the realised figure on that page was not read first-hand.
https://www.christies.com.cn/en/lot/lot-6470162'Meditation in a tenement' sold for $110,833 at Phillips in June 2026 - the highest figure on record for the artist in our holdings.
Market · Reported · Event: 2026-06
From the EGON internal auction database, not an external source. Not independently verified against a Phillips results page, and it conflicts with MutualArt's stated record; both are reported separately rather than reconciled.
Ingleby Gallery inventory of 2024-2025 paintings is displayed on artnet as 'Sold' or 'Reserved' with no published prices.
Market · Documented · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Indicates a gallery-controlled primary market. Artnet lists 10 auction results, fewer than MutualArt's 17 works, reflecting different database coverage rather than a conflict about any single sale.
https://www.artnet.com/artists/andrew-cranston/Tate holds 'I take sugar with tea (afternoon tea)', 2023, accession T16310, and the work is on display at Tate Modern as part of 'In the Studio: Painting the Figure in the 21st Century'.
Institutional · Documented · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Tate's own artwork page confirms holding, accession number and current display. The acquisition date and credit line were not present in the retrieved page text - a not-retrieved credit line on that specific rendering, not evidence that Tate publishes none. The Tate artist page shows this as the only Cranston work in the collection.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/cranston-i-take-sugar-with-tea-afternoon-tea-t16310The Hepworth Wakefield acquired Cranston's 'A snake came to my coffee table on a hot, hot day to drink there' (2023) as the second work purchased through the JW Anderson Collections Fund; the fund awards GBP 50,000 annually to a UK collecting institution for artists under-represented in UK collections, and Wakefield was announced as inaugural recipient in February 2023.
Institutional · Documented · Event: 2023 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Museum's own news release, read via search result content; a direct page fetch was not completed (fetch-tool limit), so no verbatim collection credit line was captured. Apollo independently describes the work as recently acquired for the gallery's collection.
https://hepworthwakefield.org/news/jw-anderson-and-the-hepworth-wakefield-are-pleased-to-announce-second-work-acquired-by-the-jw-anderson-collections-fund/'What made you stop here?' at The Hepworth Wakefield was Cranston's first solo exhibition in a UK public institution, comprising 38 paintings, 25 November 2023 - 2 June 2024.
Institutional · Documented · Event: 2023-11-25 to 2024-06-02 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Apollo and the museum's own exhibition page agree on the first-public-gallery framing and the 38-work count.
https://apollo-magazine.com/andrew-cranston-hepworth-wakefield/Cranston's work is held in collections including Tate, the Scottish National Gallery, AGNSW, ICA Miami, LACMA, the Portland Art Museum and the Royal Scottish Academy.
Institutional · Reported · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Gallery-published collection list, echoed by HENI and Emergent Magazine, and by Ingleby/MICAS with variation (MICAS adds Loewe Foundation, He Art Museum, H+ Suzhou, Hall Art Foundation, Hawick Museum, RCA; Ingleby adds the Unilever Collection). Only the Tate entry was independently confirmed against a museum database in this research.
https://www.modernart.net/en/artists/cranston'Dreams of the Everyday', pairing Cranston with Winifred Nicholson and curated by Richard Ingleby and Jonathan Anderson, was shown at the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney in summer 2025 and travelled to The Holburne Museum, Bath, opening October 2025.
Institutional · Reported · Event: 2025 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Gallery biography; corroborated indirectly by MutualArt noting his work currently on show at the Holburne Museum in Bath. Pier Arts Centre is an arts centre, not an accessioning national museum; the Holburne is a public museum.
https://www.inglebygallery.com/artists/32-andrew-cranston/overview/Modern Art, London presents Cranston's third solo with the gallery, 'I'm going in a field', 18 April - 30 May 2026, at 8 Bennet Street, St James's.
Institutional · Documented · Event: 2026-04-18 to 2026-05-30 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Gallery exhibition page plus Ingleby's news listing give venue and dates. A commercial gallery show, not a museum exhibition.
https://www.modernart.net/en/exhibitions/crana-2026The attribution of 'Evermore, Works 1994-2023' to Andrew Cranston is contradicted by the gallery's exact exhibition notice, which identifies Winston Roeth.
Institutional · Contradicted · Event: 2026-03-19 to 2026-06-19 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Winston Roeth solo exhibition at Mono Art Space, Lucerne. It is not a Cranston career survey or a current September2026 exhibition. Exclude it from Cranston chronology and the claimed explanation of his fingerprint period bracket. Source already checked in the focused opportunities review; this cache review did not fetch it again.
https://www.inglebygallery.com/news/7589-winston-roeth-mono-art-space-evermore-works-1994-2023/Artforum reviewed Cranston as a midcareer artist in a Modern Art Mayfair exhibition and named Vuillard and Bonnard as his most obvious models.
Critical · Documented · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Review content read via search result; the exhibition is identified in the review as 'If you see something that doesn't look right' at Modern Art, London (2022). Publication date not confirmed from the page itself.
https://www.artforum.com/events/andrew-cranston-250604/Frieze published a review of the Hepworth Wakefield exhibition describing 38 large-scale compositions and intimate book-cover miniatures.
Critical · Documented · Event: 2024 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
URL slug and content indicate a 2024 review; exact publication date not retrieved.
https://www.frieze.com/article/andrew-cranston-review-2024Cranston was awarded an Arts Foundation fellowship associated with the Royal Scottish Academy in 2014.
Critical · Unresolved · Event: 2014 · Source retrieved: 2026-09-13
Wikipedia lists it under Honours and the body text attributes it to the Royal Scottish Academy; no Arts Foundation or RSA primary announcement was retrieved to confirm the awarding body or year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cranston
Research bibliography · 28 sources
Sources recorded for this artist’s research. This bibliography does not assign every source to an individual claim.
- Andrew Cranston - Wikipedia
- Andrew Cranston born 1969 | Tate
- I take sugar with tea (afternoon tea), 2023 (T16310) | Tate
- Andrew Cranston | 17 Artworks at Auction | MutualArt
- Andrew Cranston | Artnet
- ANDREW CRANSTON (B. 1969), Salad Days | Christie's
- Andrew Cranston: Works for Sale, Upcoming Auctions & Past Results | Phillips
- Andrew Cranston, Jason - Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Lot 120
- Andrew Cranston - Overview | Ingleby Gallery
- Andrew Cranston - Works | Ingleby Gallery
- News | Ingleby Gallery
- Andrew Cranston - KARMA
- Andrew Cranston - Modern Art
- Andrew Cranston, 'I'm going in a field' - Modern Art
- Andrew Cranston, 'Thoughts from under the floorboards' - Modern Art
- Second work acquired by the JW Anderson Collections Fund | The Hepworth Wakefield
- Andrew Cranston: What made you stop here? | The Hepworth Wakefield
- Andrew Cranston: What made you stop here? - Apollo Magazine
- The Off-Beat, Dreamlike World of Andrew Cranston | Frieze
- Andrew Cranston | Artforum
- Andrew Cranston Exhibitions at leading galleries | Ocula
- Andrew Cranston - MICAS
- Andrew Cranston - Art & Prints for Sale | Artsy
- Andrew Cranston Solo Exhibition 'I'm going in a field' at Modern Art, London | HENI
- Andrew Cranston at Modern Art Paris | Emergent Magazine
- Andrew Cranston - The Hepworth Wakefield podcast
- Andrew Cranston - Talk Art | Acast
- Paint Club: There's a ghost in my house | Tate Britain
Research updates by section
These dates show when Egon’s research sections were updated. Source retrieval dates, where supplied above, refer to individual evidence notes.
Ranking updated . Research sections follow their own update dates.
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