Fine Art

Following the success of the dedicated online sale of works from the collection of Old Masters dealer Rafael Valls, which more than tripled the high estimate to gross £1.6m (see Art Market in this issue), Sotheby’s will conduct its mid-season sale of Old Masters as an online event.

The London auction house holds its first online-only sale dedicated to a single dealer

Unlike in other parts of Europe where portraits of children were a rare phenomenon, the Dutch Republic experienced a rapid increase in this genre of painting between 1500-1700.

The last few weeks of lockdown may have left you wishing you could do more to fight coronavirus. Or they may have left you feeling like that blank stretch of wall in the living room could really do with brightening up.

The sale at garden statuary specialist Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Billingshurst on March 24 (the day after lockdown) was among the first conducted under new government restrictions on social distancing.

Trudpert Schneider (1804-99), a Freiburg carpenter whose first brush with photography was to repair a broken box camera, is today deemed one of Germany’s most important daguerreotypists. The photographic firm he founded in 1847 continued under the management of his sons Heinrich and Wilhelm until 1921.

Samuel Palmer (1805-81) prints are not unusual on the market but one of two that were offered as a single lot at Chorley’s (22.5% buyer’s premium) in Cheltenham carried an interesting inscription by the artist’s son, AH Palmer.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a Brangwyn and Urushibara woodcut

As part of a spring sale featuring works on paper under £2000, British art dealer Karen Taylor is offering this watercolour by Lady Jane Harriet Pleydell-Bouverie (1819-1903).

Aguttes’ drawings auction was one of the only sales not to be postponed after the coronavirus alert.

'Portrait of a Young Girl with a Cigarette' was a high-flyer in a sale at Wendl (21% buyer’s premium) in Rudolstadt held before open auctions were prohibited by the German authorities.

The bohemian lives of the Bloomsbury Group of artists have long been a source of fascination for the British public.

The Comerford collection of portrait miniatures, offered for sale by Chiswick Auctions last month, was acquired almost in its entirety by a single bidder.

Giant of the Welsh art market takes the limelight with an intriguing yellow-infused work