Auctioneers

“With the exception of Dürer’s Apocalypse, the most influential woodcut programme from Germany was that of the Cologne Bible of 1478-79.”

Tim Goodman, former chairman of Sotheby’s Australia, is to relaunch his online auction house Fine Art Bourse (FAB) this month.

Handsomely bound, a set of Gould’s Birds of Britain offered as part of the small but select Dorros ornithological library at Christie’s New York sale of June 15 failed against a $60,000-80,000 estimate, but in a Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of the previous day a very differently presented set brought a mid-estimate £36,000.

Austrian artists figured prominently at the June 20-21 sale at Kinsky (26% buyer’s premium) in Vienna.

Bid to £5000 at Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a 1593 first of Thomas Fale’s 'Horolographia. The Art of Dialling'.

The biggest sensation at Scheublein (26% buyer’s premium) in Munich on June 30 was caused by an oil painting of American Indians from the mid-19th century. It was an oil study for a famous painting by Carl Ferdinand Wimar (1828-62), who also went by the name of Charles Wimar.

Leading a 75-lot Brontë collection sold by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 10* was a set of two of the novels written by the sisters in the hugely productive years of 1846-47.

The collection of Clarice Cliff formed by André Aerne, a voice professor at Butler University in the US who died last year, will be offered in an online sale at Christie’s this month.

Works by the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers continued to outperform the rest of the Victorian art market during the latest round of sales in London.

Like many modern artists, John Bellany’s (1942-2013) canvases reflect his personal story – and his was a turbulent one.

For many years auctioneers have been itching to move the finest arms and armour from the province of the specialist collector and establish them with a wider audience as works of art in their own right.

It has been 50 years since Sotheby’s first held its annual August sporting guns sales at the prestigious Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.

More 19th century art was offered in London when over 120 lots of European and Orientalist pictures went under the hammer at Christie’s.