Old Masters

Royal Museums Greenwich are attempting to raise £10m to buy a version of The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I. The work currently belongs to descendants of Sir Francis Drake but the institution say that unless the required funds are raised, the painting “could be sold on the open market and even go overseas”.

Christie’s have announced details of their latest ‘themed’ sale – an evening sale of British art which will take place in London on June 30.

An important drawing by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) that changed hands in a major private sale has been temporarily stopped from leaving the UK.

The 29th staging of TEFAF Maastricht will go down as a good edition of the fair with dealers reporting decent sales overall and the changes made for this year’s event meeting general approval among the standholders.

An important work by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) will be among the leading lots on offer at this summer’s auction series in London. Lot and his Daughters from c.1613-14 will be the centrepiece of Christie’s newly launched ‘curated’ week of sales branded Classic Week in July.

The aisles were busy at the opening of the 29th edition of TEFAF Maastricht 2016 and a decent stream of sales to private buyers added to the buzz created by some significant museum acquisitions.

Export bars have been placed on the robes and dagger of TE Lawrence (1888-1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia, in a bid to keep the items in the UK.

Colnaghi, the venerable London Old Master dealership, is to merge with art dealers Coll & Cortés (London and Madrid).

A Rembrandt portrait sold in a £35m private sale negotiated by Sotheby’s will be staying in the UK after the overseas buyer withdrew their application to export the painting.

A John Constable (1776-1837) oil sketch drew prolonged competition at the latest auction held at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.

This painting, found by John Nye of Bloomfield, New Jersey saleroom Nye & Company Auctions leaning up against a cellar wall, became one of the sleepers of the year on September 22.

Three years after Christie’s sold an earlier version for £20m, a second version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) The Lock is being offered at Sotheby’s Old Master & British Paintings Sale on December 9.

In the 1984 book ‘The Late Paintings and Drawings of John Constable’ by Graham Reynolds, a pencil drawing of the back and shoulders of the artist’s wife Mrs Maria Constable (nee Bicknell) is described as ‘whereabouts unknown’.

A High Court judge has dismissed a claim made against Sotheby’s surrounding the sale of a disputed version of Caravaggio’s ‘The Card Sharps’.

The outstanding lot of the latest Old Master auction series in London, ‘Rome, from Mount Aventine’ by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), was knocked down at £27m at Sotheby’s evening sale, setting a record price for the artist.

The opening salvos have been fired in the court case centred on the version of Caravaggio’s ‘The Card Sharps’ which sold at Sotheby’s in 2006.

While two of the top prices of the London auctions last week came for ancient sculptures – the £14m Old Kingdom Egyptian limestone statue at Christie’s and the £8.3m for the Roman marble of Aphrodite (c.41-54AD) at Sotheby’s – there was also a bumper run of Old Master and British picture sales.

The earliest dated picture by the 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), one of only two works by the artist left in private hands, will be a highlight of Christie’s Old Masters auction in London next month.

A rare painting of two big cats by George Stubbs will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in London on July 9.

An appeal to buy Van Dyck’s final self-portrait for the nation, painted in England in 1640-41, has been given a boost by the news that a lower price is expected.