The Kent County Council Art Collection began to be sold off at auction in 2025. A sale in July last year sold around 350 lithographs, linocuts, screenprints, etchings, wood cuts and engravings. Advice from an unnamed art historian was that the material might not represent any official historic value but was nonetheless interesting. The lots included scenes depicting Dover, Tenterden, Maidstone, Ivychurch, Canterbury and Sepham Heath near Sevenoaks with seascapes, wildlife and of course oast houses, all of which one might have thought would have been of interest and value across Kent. Cabinet Member for Community and Regulatory Services and Reform councillor Paul Webb said: “The reason for selling is a practical one, with the closure of the basement store where the art works are kept." The Reform council is under severe budgetary pressure and struggling to find savings which would allow it to deliver on a promised council tax cut.
Most of the art was purchased forty years ago as part of the Kent Visual Arts Loan Scheme (KVALS) designed for lending to schools and work places. This offered the opportunity for people to experience and benefit from art on a daily basis when it might otherwise not have been a possibility. KVALS has not run for more than 10 years and the artwork has been in storage since that time. The catalogue can still be viewed online. The Kent County Council Art Collection runs from lots one to 92 with an estimated maximum value of £45,700 and individual lots varying from £200 to £1,500. The eventual hammer price was just over £40,000.
Now a second group of some 160 lots from the Collection has been put up for auction which includes prints, oil paintings and a significant group of photographs from Tony Ray Jones, Andy Goldsworthy, Timothy Fagan, John Firman, Terry Hulf, Chris Shore, and others. The photographs run from lot 331-396.
The Tony Ray Jones work consists of 33 prints mainly taken in Kent, but also including work from London, the Isle of Man and Brighton. All are estimated at £300-500.
Thanks to Paul Reas for flagging up the sale.
Paint. Print. Sculpt.
Sworders, online auction
10 March 2026
See: https://www.sworder.co.uk/auction/search/?au=1298
Image: Tony Ray Jones (British, 1941-1972), 'Trooping the Colour', 1967
