Offer Waterman

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Offer Waterman are specialist dealers in 20th Century British and International Post-War and Contemporary art.

The gallery is temporarily closed to the public but we are continuing to work from home.

18/05/2026

Painted during a key period in William Scott’s career, Red Figure, 1954, stands as a striking testament to his bold engagement with the figure, abstraction, and contemporary transatlantic painting currents. Here the seated female form is rendered with a visceral physicality, its contours shaped as much by painterly gesture as by anatomical description. Monumental and elemental, the figure emerges from the canvas with a raw immediacy - hovering between the corporeal and the abstract, asserting its presence through rhythm, surface and form.

We are delighted to be presenting this modern masterpiece at New York this year - which remains open today and tomorrow.

For more information and for a full preview of the works we are showing at the fair please do get in touch!

15/05/2026

Open for the first public day of viewing - TEFAF New York - where we are thrilled to be showcasing the work of celebrated artists Magdalene Odundo and Barbara Hepworth.

Magdalene Odundo, Untitled, 1986
📷

Barbara Hepworth, Three Forms (Winter Rocks), 1965

For more information or for a full preview of the works we are showing do get in touch!

13/05/2026

Celebrating the visionary artist James Tower - born on this day in 1919 - with this work from the gallery archive.

Blurring the lines with sculpture and ceramics, Tower initially trained as a painter as the Royal Academy Schools and later the Slade before falling under the spell of ceramics.

Working in earthenware Tower built his unique forms using press moulding and hand-building before applying glazes of black and white, enhanced by captivating sgraffito decoration that looked to science and the natural world.

James Tower, Oval Form, 1980, Private Collection

11/05/2026

Delighted to see these two amazing works by gallery artist Diarmuid Kelley included in this year’s Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition - open now at

29/04/2026

Celebrating Frank Auerbach - one of the greatest British artists of the last century - born on this day in 1931.

Born in Germany, Auerbach arrived in London in 1939, and soon embarked on an artistic journey that would go on to see his work celebrated in some of the most important private and public collections across the world.

With his rich and buttery Bombergian brushwork (he studied under David Bomberg at Borough Polytechnic along with his close friend and fellow painter Leon Kossoff) Auerbach captured a small coterie of sitters and the local area around his North London home and studio.

We look forward to presenting the work of Frank Auerbach at New York next month, and for more information on the fair please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

📷 Frank Auerbach, Self Portrait 2022, Private Collection

📷 Frank Auerbach, London, 1975. Photographs by Harry Diamond.

08/04/2026

Ahead of our exciting exhibition ‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Life at the Wheel’, opening this September at the gallery, we are celebrating the work of the pioneer of pottery, Hans Coper, born on this day in 1920.

Born in Chemnitz, Germany, Coper arrived in London in 1939 and was soon arrested and sent to the Huyton Internment Camp near Liverpool. Identified as an ‘enemy alien’ he was then sent to a prisoner of war camp in Canada, returning in 1941 as a volunteer in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps.

Coper’s arrival at Albion Mews marked one of the most important events in the lives of both Rie and Coper. Originally set on becoming a sculptor, once Coper discovered the potter’s wheel he too was lost to it. On Rie’s advice he attended classes at Woolwich Polytechnic given by Heber Mathews, who had studied under Staite Murray, and under Rie’s guidance mastered an understanding of glazing and materials.

Together Rie and Coper were forced to forge their own path, carving out a new space within the genre of studio ceramics, and challenging perceptions dominated by Bernard Leach and his circle. Whilst developing their own distinct aesthetic styles, their work remained inextricably linked by their biography and the decade they spent working together at Albion Mews. Both were reluctant to write or speak publicly about their inspiration or methodologies, instead they spent their lives at the wheel, throwing each day.

Featuring over 200 works from private collections (a mixture of which will be for loan and for sale), ‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Life at the Wheel’ charts the journey of both artists - and includes some of Coper’s earliest experiments within the medium, through to some of his most refined and elegant forms made before his death in 1981.

For more information, or to be added to the mailing list for the exhibition do get in touch!

Photography by

16/03/2026

‘To make pots is an adventure to me, every new work is a new beginning. Indeed I shall never cease to be a pupil.’

Celebrating the great Lucie Rie, born on this day in 1902. Born in Vienna, Rie escaped the N***s and fled to London in 1938, establishing a home and studio at 18 Albion Mews. From this small studio the artist would go on to create a breathtaking body of work, exploring the rich versatility of earth’s most basic material – clay.

Offer Waterman is delighted to present a major exhibition of the work of Lucie Rie, together with Hans Coper, later this year. Featuring over 200 works from private collections, the exhibition will mark the first major showing of both artists side-by-side in London since the Barbican exhibition of 1997.

For more information, or to receive updates on the exhibition, do get in touch!

Photography of works by

Photograph of Lucie Rie by Steffi Braun Olsen.

06/03/2026

To support The Jim and Helen Ede Fund Endowment Campaign ahead of Kettle’s Yard’s 70th anniversary in 2027, gallery artist Tarka Kings has created a new work - Wet Hair III - which will go under the hammer at this June …

The work will go on public view at Thursday 12th March until 12th April, alongside others that will available for immediate sale through Kettles Yard and others that will appear at auction.

Encompassing painting, sculpture, photography, and ceramics this special exhibition will include work by celebrated contemporary artists Rana Begum, Antony Gormley, Jennifer Lee, Veronica Ryan, Megan Rooney and Caroline Walker and many others; as well as renowned 20th Century artists such as Ben Nicholson and Lucie Rie.

For more information head to the Kettle’s Yard website or get in touch!

27/02/2026

‘Do you know that I love marble specially because of its radiance in the light, its hardness, precision and response to the sun?’

Barbara Hepworth

Celebrated as one of the most important artists working in Britain in the 20th Century, Barbara Hepworth produced more than 600 sculptures during her lifetime, more than 100 of which were carved in different varieties of marble. One of around 15 carvings made in Seravezz marble in the 1930s ‘Conoid, Sphere & Hollow II’ closely relates to the first and third versions of the carving, held in the permanent collections of and the respectively.

Taught the traditional technique of marble carving over a nine-month period by Italian master-carver Giovanni Ardini in Florence in 1925, Hepworth became, alongside Henry Moore, one of Britain’s leading exponents of ‘direct carving’ in the 1920s. The artist’s time in Italy had a profound impact on the direction her work was to take. It was here that she was first introduced to Seravezza marble, which she later used to carve this sculpture and would continue to work with throughout the rest of her career.

Barbara Hepworth, Conoid, Sphere & Hollow II, 1937

26/02/2026

Alive with activity, ‘1945 (St Ives)’ was painted at Chy-an-Kerris, the house in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, where Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth had lived since September 1942. Depicting a view across the harbor, which, at this time was very much a working port, in the middle ground fishing boats bob gently, whilst in the far distance we see a schooner heading out to sea in full sail.

A statement of British identity and pride, the Union Jack was a new motif that Nicholson adopted within his work to mark 8 May 1945 (VE Day), the official end date of World War II. Although the fallout of the war was to continue, ‘life was coming back to normal; fresh air was again blowing through the land after years of enclosure. It was no longer necessary to have blackout on one’s windows in order to hide from the enemy in the sky.’ The hope and optimism of this particular moment is reflected in this masterful painting from our archives, marking a scene of normality as Britain re-emerged from the war, with life resuming once again.

📷 Ben Nicholson, 1945 (St Ives), Private Collection (detail)

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