Mixed Media

Naive artworks that can also suit modern decorating taste are rising in popularity and price.

The multi-talented dramatist, artist and set designer Louis Carrogis known as Carmontelle (1717-1806) is well known for his extensive series of portraits of members of the French Court and other famous personalities.

Prints and drawings by the English artist and caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) from an American collector are being sold on iGavel auctions in an online sale presented by Lark Mason Associates that runs until September 28.

The latest themed sale at Bonhams (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) was an auction titled India in Art, offering a mix of pictures and objects relating to the subcontinent.

Offered at Sotheby’s (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) in an online sale that ran until December 1 under the title of The Fantasy World of Arthur Rackham was a collection of 31 original ink and watercolour artworks by the artist from the collection of American photographer Shirley Carter Burden (1908-89).

It is thought that Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) executed at least a hundred drawings featuring the Punchinelli, the hook-nosed, humpbacked clowns which were central to the commedia dell’arte. Jonathan Franks reports.

Among the highlights of the Asian Art auction at Koller on June 2 is this ink and colour scroll painting 'Sunrise at Mount Tai' by Li Keran (1907-89).

Shapiro is holding an International Fine and Decorative Art sale on April 24-25 in Mamaroneck, New York.

This painting by Le Pho (1907-2001) will be one of the highlights of the Asian works of Art sale to be held by Tajan on December 7 in Paris.

Twenty lots from a private Sydney collection will open the sale devoted to Chinese Paintings to be held by Bonhams on December 2 in Sydney.

Both American and European works are on offer in Skinner’s wide-ranging sale of paintings and sculpture to be held live online in its Marlborough rooms on May 31.

This late drawing by Karl Hofer (1878-1955), the German Expressionist painter who was branded a creator of ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazis, was one of dozens consigned by his family to Taunton saleroom Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium).

In a relatively short period from 1959-64, the Spanish-Italian Realist Xavier Bueno (1915-79) created his most recognisable works: a series of melancholic and haunting portraits of children. For Bueno these ‘Bambini’ portraits symbolised a “humiliated and oppressed humanity”.

An acrylic on paper of Timanfaya, the only active volcano on the Canary Island of Lanzarote, by British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), is one of the highlights of the exhibition A Distant Isle.

An Indian School work guided at £100-150 was the star turn at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Taunton in Somerset on August 2.