Fine Art

Following the multi-million-pound sale at Sotheby’s in 2015, more items from West Horsley Place, the remarkable Grade I listed mansion in Surrey, are to be sold at auction to raise money for urgent repairs.

Beloved of TV antiques programmes and of bidders knowing the lots are absolutely fresh to market, there are few phrases to stir the blood at an auction as much as ‘from the attic’.

A 17th century portrait of a woman who suffered from a rare congenital condition resulting in excessive hair growth on the body has been acquired by the Wellcome Collection.

Art assembled by Peter Mangold, the late political historian, led a strong line-up of Modern British pictures at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury.

The so-called ‘Great Bardfield Artists’, named after the Essex village where a community of painters and designers lived from the 1930s onwards, has become fertile ground for local auction house Sworders (22% buyer’s premium).

Paintings by major exponents of Expressionism almost invariably occupy many of the top slots in the modern and contemporary art sales staged in late autumn across Germany and Austria.

“Modern British sculpture is making extremely good money at the moment – it is a market moving as quickly, if not slightly quicker, than paintings.” So said Philip Smith, department head of Mallams (20% buyer’s premium).

The potential star of the show at the sale of Selected Works held by Grisebach (25% buyer’s premium) in Berlin on November 30 lived up to its expectations.

The market for works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-68) was pushed into a new dimension at recent German auctions.

A market-fresh figure study by Mod Brit giant LS Lowry (1887-1976), pictured below, topped the sale at Woolley & Wallis.

Multi-million buys may be out of reach but five-figure quality is on offer at top London gallery Richard Green.

It may be strange and surreal, but John Spencer-Churchill’s (1909-92) landscape panorama of the evacuation of Dunkirk is the only depiction of the event known to have been painted by an eyewitness.

The photographic archive of Emile Zola (1840-1902) was offered by Artcurial (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on December 4 with over 90% of the 75 lots changing hands.

The famous photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson are no strangers to salerooms but it is not every day that you find 120 lots being offered from a single-owner collection.

Haute Epoque, the French term given to early, largely pre-Renaissance, works of art, especially sculpture, featured in several Parisian sales in the winter high season.

Helen Sutcliffe runs the premises of Sutcliffe Galleries in Harrogate. The family-run business has been trading for more than six decades and specialises in paintings from the 18th century to the present day.