Sculpture

This Italian marble bust of an emperor, catalogued as 17th century after the antique, provided a moment of saleroom drama at Sworders’ Fine Interiors auction in Stansted on September 10.

One of the highlights of Cottone’s sale in Geneseo, New York, on September 28 will be this marble head of Dionysos, a Roman copy of a late classical (4th century BC) Greek archetype.

Brought into the Epping saleroom of the Bonington auction house with a collection of Moorcroft, this Florentine Mannerist bronze sold for £150,000.

An Art Deco bronze by Demétre Chiparus (1886-1947) sold for more than £20,000 at the latest 'Art and Antiques for Everyone' fair – the first edition under the management of MAD Events.

Italian sculptors were the hottest property as garden statuary flourished at summer sales in the Home Counties.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

In what could well be a first, all 10 of Christie’s top evening sale lots on June 17 were sculptures. The group comprised the works of four blue-chip sculptors – Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Barry Flanagan – and contributed much of the overall total at £11.3m.

Much of the pre-sale publicity from Bonhams’ June 15 Mod Brit focused on Eric Gill’s (1882-1942) Girl with a Comb in her Hair (1928) – a market-fresh carved head and torso valued at £200,000-300,000 and admired for its unusual pose and luxuriant wavy hair.

A maquette for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in London’s Tavistock Square – valued at £20,000 on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow – was the top lot in a sale of works from the Polish-born artist Fredda Brilliant (1903-99).

When Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), leading artist of the French Romantic school, died in 1863, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts commissioned a bust to commemorate the painter and embody his genius.

This Franz Bergman cold-painted bronze figure will feature in Maynards’ June 26 sale to be held in Richmond, British Columbia.

Born in Mount Kisco, New York, Peter Chinni (1928-2019) studied painting and portraiture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.