Fine Art

Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) has held its first live sales in Paris since lockdown.

A group of eight works by Maggi Hambling (b.1945) appeared at a recent online sale held by Welsh saleroom Rogers Jones (22% buyer’s premium).

A newly discovered bronze by a French Renaissance sculptor was acquired by the Louvre museum for €1.15m (£1.05m) at an auction in Paris on June 9.

Outside Paris auctions have also started up as lockdown eases.

Sotheby’s Paris (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) reported a cumulative total of €5.4m for the five online sales it held over two weeks in mid May through to early June. The initiative attracted new buyers, said the auction house, with 35% in the jewellery sale and 27% in the Contemporary art auction.

Friedrich Goldscheider (1845-97) is famous for founding the Goldscheider ceramics factory which was set up in Vienna in 1885.

An album of 12 early watercolour drawings of Australian Aborigines made a surprising £72,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Forum Auctions in London.

This painting of Madame de Saint-Maurice is one of five works by Edouard Vuillard spanning the years 1900-18 from the Georges and Jacqueline Herbin collection on offer at Artcurial in Paris.

A black chalk drawing of a skeleton drew an extraordinary competition at a German auction house Lempertz at the end of last month. Estimated at €3000-3500, it attracted at least 15 bidders and was eventually knocked down at €420,000 (£381,820) to a French dealer.

One of the central attractions in Rome is the Piazza Navona and the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers). It was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1650 at the behest of Pope Innocent X.

Under the changed regulations in Germany it would have been possible for Dr Andreas Sturies (20% buyer’s premium) in Düsseldorf to hold the spring auction in front of an audience.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a George Armfield hunting scene.

A group of portrait miniatures sold recently by John Nicholson’s (30/25% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey included this English school image, c.1700, of William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster.

A portrait of a 16th century Protestant theologian and reformer surfaced at a sale at Ginhart (23% buyer’s premium) in Tegernsee, some 35 miles south of the Bavarian capital Munich.

Three works by Ipswich painter perform well in rescheduled East Anglian-themed auction

Shortly before the UK lockdown, Cumbrian saleroom Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium inc VAT) offered works from the collection of The Shorthorn Society, a body that promotes the famous breed of cattle in the UK and Ireland.