Fine Art

THIS unrecorded portrait by John Constable, estimated to make up to £80,000, was discovered by East Anglian auctioneer and fine art broker John Vost during a routine valuation at a house on the Suffolk/Norfolk border.

THE ongoing calls for a ban against fox hunting have failed to dent the popularity of hunting and equestrian pictures at auction. Cecil Aldin (1870-1935) and Snaffles (Charlie Johnson Payne) (1884-1967) are just two of the artists for whom demand is strong and after Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) it is Lionel Edwards (1878-1966) whose work is taking consistently high prices in the salerooms.

CHRISTIE’S established 15 new auction records at their Rockefeller Centre saleroom on the evening of May 14 with a $42.1m (£29.9m) sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art.

Sir John Lavery R.A. (1856-1941) is one of the hottest names in the booming Irish picture market and back in 1998 The Bridge at Grez, a large oil on canvas, took a record £1.3m at Christie’s London.

Sotheby’s quadruple recent results and Christie’s celebrate boost too: Barely a month after its former chairman and chief executive were sentenced in a New York court, Sotheby’s bounced back in their Manhattan saleroom on May 8 with a $126m (£88.7m) Part I auction of Impressionist and Modern Art.

THE Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just acquired an important oil sketch by Sir Peter Paul Rubens thanks to grants from the National Arts Collection Fund and the Resource V&A Purchase Fund.

THE strength of the Irish picture market will be tested in May when Sotheby’s and Christie’s hold their annual Irish sales in London. Recent sales in Ireland indicate things look promising, and that interest is still strong Stateside was confirmed at Dennis Auction Service (10% buyer’s premium) in Stewartsville, New Jersey on March 9 sale when this early work, right, by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) came up for auction.

A pair of ornamental blue and gold vases made by the Manufacture Impériale in St Petersburg (c.1825-30) soared to €520,000 (£335,000) at Beaussant-Lefèvre on April 10.

ROBERT Lenkiewicz, one of Britain’s most controversial artists, has been burgled for the third time in five weeks in what is widely believed to be a ‘stolen to order’ theft.

One of the earliest known portraits of Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first Prime Minister, is to be sold at Cheffin’s Cambridge salerooms on May 14, as part of the collection of Cambridge academic Sir John Plumb.

THE dust is finally starting to settle in the newly merged Bonhams (17.5% buyer’s premium). Those who lost their jobs have long since gone, departments have been reshuffled and on March 27 the last print sale was held at the Chelsea salerooms.

Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann spent several million dollars of his fortune on Impressionist and Modern art, but, for all this expenditure, few specialists in this most expensive of all sectors of the art market seemed to have regarded Dr Dreesmann as a major collector.

ONE of the most important oils by Irish artist Louis le Brocquy (b.1916) is to return to Ireland after spending nearly 50 years in Italy.

Keen to maximise international interest, Christie’s sold the major portion of Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann’s Old Master pictures in London on April 11.

Two small locally consigned lots provided the best seller and cover lot at the buoyant March 23 sale held by Michael J. Bowman (15% buyer’s premium) at Chudleigh Town Hall.

They haven’t exactly been churning out sales at Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) King Street rooms recently. Things have been pretty quiet since the February Impressionist and Modern auctions, and their March 21 auction of 19th century furniture and sculpture was their first decorative arts event this year.

THE names of two women artists, one very well known, the other undeservedly obscure, provided talking points at two provincial sales in March.

Phillips have released details of a bumper sale of Contemporary art to be held in New York on May 13. The announcement came as art trade rumours persist about the reasons for the auction house postponing their May 6 sale of Impressionist and Modern art until June at the earliest.

Is there a future for Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg (15/10% buyer’s premium) now that Bernard Arnault and the financial might of the LVMH group have distanced themselves from the company and the enormous guarantees it was paying to secure high-value consignments?

We reported in last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette's Art Market pages on the Ellekilde, Copenhagen sale and reflected on the popularity of Scandinavian interiors. An altogether different Danish artist to enjoy success at that sale was Gerda Wegener (1885-1940), a magazine illustrator, whose work proves especially popular with an American audience.