Sculpture

SETTING the highest price ever seen at auction for Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), this lifesize sculpture of a mother and child, overshot its £60,000-80,000 estimate at Sotheby's latest sale of Modern British art in London before being knocked down to a private buyer at £120,000.

THE issue of the Manchester Art Gallery’s missing Eric Gill sculpture has been resolved, Cheshire auctioneer Adam Partridge has told ATG.

If the price paid for Alberto Giacometti's (1901-1966) sculpture L'Homme qui Marche I is anything to go by, then the art market is now striding out of recession. Selling for £58m (plus premium) at Sotheby's evening sale on February 3, it became the most expensive object ever sold at auction.

SERIOUS levels of demand emerged for works at the very top end of the art market as this month’s flagship Impressionist and Modern art auction series raised a combined hammer total of £225.8m, massively up on the £108.8m for the equivalent series last year.

IS there still life in the Irish art market? The auction record for a piece of sculpture by an Irish artist was broken at Adam's 140-lot sale of Irish art on October 14.

This 113/4in (29cm) high slate sculpture titled Maquette for Large Sculpture: Four-Square (Four-Circle) was the first that Penzance auctioneer David Lay had offered for sale.

LONDON Sculpture Week, which was scheduled for June 12 to 19, has been suspended due to lack of sponsorship.

The final chapter in the story of ‘The Colin Wilson Monkeys’ ended quietly on July 30 when they sold at auction for an unspectacular £25,000.

GALERIE Kugel in Paris are to hold an exhibition of the Prince of Liechtenstein’s collection of bronzes from September 10 to November 7.

Two auctioneers, two Gérôme sculptures, but two very different estimates

Is the final chapter in the story of Colin Wilson's ‘Giambologna’ monkeys about to be written? Not, it seems, without a twist in the tale.

It is only 3.25in (8cm) high, but it made more than any sculpture or antiquity ever offered at auction.

Only five Mayfair dealers will participate in this year’s London Sculpture Week (June 14-22), the smallest number since the initiative was launched in 2004.

This Edgar Degas bronze owned by the late art dealer Lillian Browse has been saved for the nation in a deal brokered by Christie’s in lieu of inheritance tax. It follows a similar sale recently arranged by the auctioneers that saw the National Gallery acquire two works by Italian artist Giovanni Paolo Panini.

Weighing 1.5 tonnes, Eduardo Paolozzi’s (1924-2005) Master of the Universe is winched into position outside the Edinburgh saleroom of Lyon and Turnbull. The sculpture, one of an edition of four, provided the highlight of the auctioneer’s first Contemporary Art Sale on September 1, selling to Edinburgh gallery Bourne Fine Art on behalf of a client at an artist’s record of £120,000 (plus buyer’s premium).

THE piece with star billing at Bonhams’ April 21 Antiquities auction was the dramatic white marble group, shown here, even meriting its own separate hardback catalogue.

Lays, Penzance, March 17-18. Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent A BRONZE statue, Vanity by Sir William Hamo Thornycroft R.A. (1850-1925), was the most sought-after entry at this Cornish outing.

It is not every day a dealer refuses to sell a piece of stock, but that was very much the case with the work shown here, which was the highlight of Sotheby’s Bond Street's (20/12% buyer's premium) sale of the Adler collection last month.

Morphets, Harrogate, November 25 Buyer’s premium: 15/10 per centTWO different female figures stole the limelight at Harrogate; a rather racy bronze and alabaster, semi-nude who graced the catalogue front cover, and a much smaller, more demure, bronze bust of a young girl.

THERE are few more commercial subjects than children. Accordingly, it was no surprise that this near life-size Italian marble group of two children playing on a balcony (pictured right) by Donato Barcaglia, dating from the late 19th century stole the limelight at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) 19th century furniture, sculpture, works of art and ceramics sale on September 30.