Old Masters

A major price for an Old Master in the English regions came in Wiltshire last week when a still-life by Flemish painter Frans Snyders (1579-1657) caught the eye of multiple bidders.

Inherited Dutch Old Masters offered alongside recently acquired modern works by artists such as Walter Sickert, Edward Seago and Gerald Kelly proved a winning formula at Dreweatts’ (25% buyer’s premium) country house dispersal held on May 1 at Donnington Priory.

This pair of half-length portraits by Sir Peter Lely (1618-80) features in Thomaston Place Auction Galleries’ next sale to be held in Maine from May 31-June 2.

Among the top lots at Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) trio of Old Master sales during ‘Classic Week’ was a rediscovered oil sketch by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) for 'The Distribution of the Eagle Standards'.

An etching by Rembrandt (1606-69) offered by CG Boerner for a five-figure sum was among the stand-out Old Master sales during the recent London Original Print Fair.

One of the few images of a 16th century Eastern potentate by a Western artist emerged from a ‘royal collection’ to sell for a multi-estimate sum at Sotheby’s.

Christie’s latest ‘Classic Week’ sales series put in a robust performance with sales of Old Master and 19th century pictures, sculpture and antiquities generating a premium-inclusive total of $79.5m (£61.16m).

As a rule, Lempertz (24/20% buyer’s premium) in Cologne always opens its spring season with a sale of moderately priced Old Master and 19th century paintings.

Researching Old Master paintings is sometimes likened to putting together the pieces of a jigsaw. But for one upcoming work, it seems this was quite literally the case.

A drawing offered at a Paris auction with an attribution to Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528) was hammered down at €1.13m (£980,000).

St James’s art dealer Derek Johns is offering a portrait of Sir Everard Fawkener, a former British ambassador to Constantinople, by Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-89).

The ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ is currently on show at Paris Contemporary art dealership Galerie Kamel Mennour opposite a work more than 400 years its junior.

In the 1980s, the 3ft 7in x 2ft 9in (1.1m x 85cm) canvas of Saint Bartholomew being offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 30 was tentatively ascribed to Caravaggio. The treatment of light and shadow and the extreme naturalism in the portrayal certainly indicate a proximity to the revolutionary artist.