Art and antiques news from 2010

THE price of $56.5m (£36.9m) seen for Andy Warhol's The Men in Her Life at Phillips de Pury's evening sale, meant that for the first time in a New York Contemporary art auction series the top lot did not come from Sotheby's or Christie's.

The Antiques Trade Gazette Awards for the two outstanding works of art on sale during Asian Art in London were presented at the crowded Gala Party held at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

NICK Korniloff has exclusively told ATG that the Florida International Fine Art Fair scheduled for a February 2011 launch in Miami is officially postponed for a year.

YOU’D have thought he’d be glad to see the back of it. But duped art dealer David Smith of Neptune Fine Art has bought back the fake Lowry picture he originally purchased for £330,000.

MODELLED as a brickwork kiln, this rare stoneware lampbase was one of only four hand thrown by Guy Sydenham to commemorate the pottery’s centenary in 1973.

POLICE are appealing for help after a swathe of established regional salerooms were hit by a major credit card fraud last month. Victims are now recommending the adoption of a new protocol for regional auctioneers when conducting ‘cardholder not present’ credit card transactions.

THIS George IV rosewood, parcel gilt and gilt metal mounted drum table, in the manner of Morel and Seddon, c.1825 topped Dreweatts latest furniture sale at Donnington Priory with a bid of £40,000.

ALONGSIDE the $65.5m (£42.8m) Modigliani (see story here), the price of the week in New York was the phenomenal $32m (£20.9m) seen for The Finding of Moses by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

BONHAMS withdrew 16 lots, with a combined top estimate in excess of £200,000, from last Wednesday’s Bond Street furniture sale after they had good reason to believe the consignor was connected with disgraced ex-BADA dealer John Hobbs.

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

SPECULATION over a possible takeover of Christie’s by the Qatari royal family has intensified after the Emir publicly confirmed his interest in acquiring the auction house.

THIS late 18th/early 19th century Native American ball-head club made a house record when it sold for £33,000 at Charles Ross auctioneers in Woburn, Bedfordshire.

IN the space of a fortnight, prices at the top end for South African art took a significant leap forward as the auction record for the Grande Dame of the market, Irma Stern (1894-1966), was broken twice, first in Cape Town and then in London.

PARIS furniture dealer Hervé Aaron was removed as President of France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) at its AGM on October 25 – to be replaced by the man he ousted two years ago, Christian Deydier.

“I LOOK upon [it] with equal amazement, as I do upon St. Paul’s Cathedral; each the work of one man, each the work of an Englishman”.

THE latest Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) survey points to prices picking up slightly for mid-range goods at auction in the UK provinces.

MAKING £160,000 hammer at Convery Auctions last week, Nobby Stiles' 1966 World Cup winner's medal eclipsed the £140,000 made by team-mate Alan Ball's medal at Christie's South Kensington in May 2005 and set the highest price seen for a '66 medal so far at public auction.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

AN iPhone App has been launched to guide vistors around the galleries, auction houses and museums during Asian Art in London which runs from November 4 to 13.

AT £5.26m hammer, Sotheby’s three-day dispersal from the attics, stables and stores of the Derbyshire seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, was the ultimate in a ‘dusting down’ sale.