Oil, Acrylic paintings & Mixed Media

THE imminent smoking ban and the government’s attempts to tackle binge drinking wouldn’t have gone down too well with the Reffley Brethren.

The highlight of this year’s Old Master picture series in London was a pair of Roman vedute by Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1721-1780 Warsaw).

The discovery of two small panels by Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455) in a semi-detached house in Oxford ranks as one of the most remarkable art finds this country has ever witnessed.

Two sections of a painting by Francis Hayman are being officially re-united for the first time in almost three centuries at London dealer Philip Mould’s new gallery in Dover Street.

Jackson Pollock’s 1948 drip painting Number 5 has set a new record for a painting. Mexican financier David Martinez has reportedly paid $140m for it in a private deal brokered by Sotheby’s.

IT would have been the most expensive picture ever sold. At $139m, the private deal between two American billionaire buddies would have upped the record high for any painting by $4m. But the deal is now off.

CHRISTIE’s have announced that they are to sell the four remaining works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) that were part of the high profile Bloch-Bauer restitution case.

This recently discovered oil landscape by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97) will be offered for sale by Richard Winterton at Hilliards Cross, Lichfield on August 31.

Italy has witnessed a sudden, perhaps unexpected, surge in its auction scene with a series of record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s, the most remarkable of which has been the Milan sale of a cycle of Tiepolo canvases on May 30.

Pablo Picasso has become the ultimate luxury brand. On May 3 at Sotheby’s New York Picasso’s rare and iconic 1941 portrait, Dora Maar au chat, became the world’s second most expensive painting when it sold for $85m (£48.3m) to a mystery buyer in the room, widely presumed to be representing a Russian oligarch.

LESS than two months remains to find the final £116,057 towards the £1.4m price of a unique portrait of the 17th century poet John Donne.

Establishing a new landmark for a picture lot sold at auction outside London, two portraits by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) took £900,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory salerooms last week.

On a cold January 26 night in Edinburgh, a packed saleroom at Lyon & Turnbull witnessed a defining moment in the Scottish art market.

When Alex Butcher’s eye was drawn to this painting, right, he did not realise that part of the attraction might have been its familiarity.

GORRINGES were celebrating a house record last Thursday following the sale of a rediscovered late work by John William Godward (1858-1922) for £440,000.

A WORK of art in itself, a piece of US history and redolent of the tragic past of the American Indian tribes in which so many collectors are now passionately interested. Could any artefact be more likely to guarantee a huge price than this Blackfoot war bonnet, right, dating from the early/mid 19th century but still in fine condition?

Appearing at Frank R. Marshall’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale at Knutsford, Cheshire on January 11 and selling at £720, was this 10 x 7in (25 x 18cm) oil-on-canvas, right, by Augustus Edwin Mulready (fl1863-1880 d.1886). Framed, mounted and indistinctly signed, it showed a characteristic subject for the artist, and was estimated at £200-300.

What makes a painting totally uncommercial one year and a sure-fire seller the next?Clearly, if there was a general principal of financial success to be learned in the art market there would be rather more dealers appearing in the media’s annual rich lists than there are now.

AS recently as a decade ago, the Pennsylvanian Impressionists or New Hope School – perhaps the most recognisable group of painters to emerge from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) – remained a relatively untapped seam for ‘serious’ auctioneers of the Mid-Atlantic States.

Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse, lend me your grey mare, All along, down along, out along lee, For I want to go to Widecombe Fair, With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.The traditional song Widecombe Fair was well known in Devon around the middle of the 19th century, as was the name Thomas Cobley Gent, of Buttsford, Colebrooke.