Fine Art

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

GENERATING a 25-minute bidding battle at Halls' sale in Shrewsbury on October 20, The Earl of Oxford's Roan or Bloody shouldered Arabian by John Wootton (c.1682-1764) set a new house record when it was finally knocked down to an anonymous UK buyer for £326,000.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

FOUND earlier this year in a house near Oxford where they were carrying out a probate valuation, auctioneers Mallams offered for sale this seminal painting Bravo! by C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) on October 13.

WHILE the sale of artworks and ephemera formerly owned by the Lehman Brothers bank had a strange attraction for souvenir hunters and contemporary art dealers, it was, perhaps more surprisingly, also of interest for enthusiasts of marine art.

WHEN Barnes Thomas, director of Barnes Thomas County Auctioneers of Penzance, was called to the home of a retired fisherman in the town to value a painting, he found a cache of works by the original St Ives naive painter, Alfred Wallis (1855-1942).

THE fake Lowry at the centre of a £1m art fraud that landed Maurice “Lord Windsor” Taylor in jail is heading to auction to help pay his victims compensation. Once sold for £330,000, it is now valued at just £5,000-10,000.

Bonhams’ latest prints sale in London included a relatively large selection of Modern British works from the likes of John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore.

A RARE group of four hand-coloured lithographs of Sydney from c.1826 by travel artist Augustus Earle (1793-1838) saw interest from both hemispheres of the globe emerge at Bonhams' (20% buyer's premium) in Oxford on September 8.

LA Minotauromachie from 1935 is arguably the masterpiece of the Pablo Picasso's 2000 or so different printed works.

WARTIME works by C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) are iconic, sought after and scarce – a potent commercial combination.

LONDON-based Russian art specialists MacDougall’s have appointed three people to establish an Old Masters and 19th century European art department.

A COLLECTION of Augustus John drawings, consigned by the family of Dame Elizabeth Taylor, will be sold by a West London auction house on September 28.

TECHNOLOGY is increasingly important in the art market but a pair of oils by the Anglo-Australian artist William Blamire Young (1862-1935), is believed to be the first significant work identified and consigned to auction through Christie’s iPhone application.

CHISWICK Auctions are set to sell one of the most important early paintings by the German Expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) to have come to market in recent years.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

IN a confiscation hearing earlier this month, Maurice Taylor, the man jailed last March for three years for selling a fake Lowry painting, was warned that he faced a further ten years in prison unless he paid back almost £1.2m deemed to be the proceeds of fraud.

FOUR sketches by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, found tucked inside covers of Led Zeppelin LPs, have been withdrawn from sale at Chilcotts auctioneers in Tiverton, Devon, because of a “misunderstanding over ownership” according to the auctioneers.

IN the early hours of August 6, a Henry Moore sketch and two oil paintings were stolen from Trinity House on the High Street in Broadway, south Worcestershire.

Led Zeppelin, Robert Burns and a 14-year-old John Everett Millais might seem unlikely bedfellows. But a group of four pencil drawings which have surfaced at the Devon auctioneers Chilcotts of Tiverton appear to link the three.