The title of this sale derives from a portrait of Andrew Allfree by Howard Hodgkin, Going for a Walk with Andrew, painted in 1998 which is now in the collection of the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. 

To know Andrew’s taste is, in a sense, to go for a walk with him: there is no fixed route and no strict hierarchy between the ancient and the modern, the grand and the humble. What matters is curiosity, the unexpected object, the arresting colour, the beautiful surface, or simply something that feels right- it is both accessible and infuriatingly inaccessible at the same time!

Walking is an especially fitting metaphor for this way of collecting. It allows for detours and discoveries, for stopping to notice something others might pass by. In Andrew's world, a work of art can sit alongside furniture, textiles, fragments or everyday objects. What connects them is not necessarily age, provenance or function, but character.

The result is eclectic as Andrew does not collect according to a proscribed theory. Instead, his taste emerges through the act of looking and choosing. His philosophy is that a humble object can become extraordinary in the right setting, while a grand one can take on a new character when placed beside something unexpected.

India has been an important part of that visual education. Allfree's long relationship with the country has deepened his appreciation of colour, pattern and material, encountered as part of everyday life rather than as purely decorative elements. His response is typical of his wider approach: he looks, absorbs and brings what he discovers into conversation with everything else.

This is where connoisseurship and instinct meet. The history of an object matters, as does rarity, but so does the pleasure it gives. Allfree moves easily between the two, recognising beauty whether or not it comes with an illustrious provenance.