Art and antiques news from 2015

Sotheby’s year-end results for 2014 signal a refocus of activity to encompass much more of the middle market than in recent years.

Every year on the cusp between winter and spring, the enormous ‘TEFAF Maastricht’ arrives at the Maastricht Exhibition & Conference Centre (MECC), a rare souk of art, antiques and design from antiquity to contemporary, Boulle to Basquiat.

Old Master paintings rarely take centre stage over Modern, Impressionist or Contemporary art these days. Yet this most traditional of collecting disciplines remains the soul of TEFAF Maastricht, the umbilical cord to its genesis as the Pictura fair.

Potteries Auctions in Staffordshire are offering this large William Moorcroft exhibition vase at their second auction in their new premises in Silverdale on April 25.

This late 19th century Native American outfit proved the highlight of Fonsie Mealy’s latest sale in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, when it sold for €320,000 (£246,150).

More information has emerged about the colourful recent history of the £5m Wolsey Angels.

Holloway’s of Banbury, founded in the early 1970s by the late Tim Holloway and owned since 2001 by Nick Williams, is to join Charles Ross Auctioneers, owned by Russell Beard.

How do you prevent your own identity as a dealer being subsumed by that of the fair at which you are exhibiting?

The online-only sale of a modern British gallantry award estimated at a hefty £100,000-120,000 was always going to be an interesting test of the market.

Look back through the provenance of any major Impressionist work and the chances are it will have passed through the hands of Paul Durand-Ruel.

Halls’ director of fine art Jeremy Lamond has been leading a social media campaign to promote the virtues of antique furniture.

COMMENT: Former Olympia antiques fair director Victoria Borwick wants to be MP for Kensington & Chelsea. Let’s back her in our own interests, says ATG Editor Ivan Macquisten

Sotheby’s have taken a 25% stake in RM, the classic and luxury car auctioneer, renaming the company RM Sotheby’s.

This finely modelled ancient Egyptian bronze cat head with original large gold hoop earrings was the uncontested star of David Lay’s latest auction in Penzance, Cornwall.

COMMENT: Jeremy Lamond, fine art director of Halls of Shrewsbury, sets out his ten-point plan for reviving the fortunes of brown furniture

Dulwich Picture Gallery have announced a major exhibition dedicated to Eric Ravilious (1903-42) from April 1 until August 31.

The curators of the ‘Inventing Impressionism’ exhibition at the National Gallery are giving a talk at the second edition of ‘VIEW: A Festival of Art History’ at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni in South Kensington on Saturday, February 28, at 7pm.

Law change could cost millions and expose them to criminal charge risk as expired design rights come back into force and upgrade

They called him Groovy Bob, “one of the most influential people of the London sixties scene” according to Paul McCartney and immortalised, handcuffed to Mick Jagger inside a police van, by Pop artist Richard Hamilton in the screenprint, Swingeing London 67.

If you get your skates on and head to the Kent coast you will find things are on the move for antiques collectors.