Auctioneers

Until its conversion into a pizzeria and cocktail bar three years ago, The Spread Eagle pub in Greenwich had hardly changed since its origins as a 17th century coaching inn.

For a number of years now ship’s logs have made good prices at auction. Those featuring naval engagements, significant encounters in foreign lands, or with added, if amateur illustration – even logs kept on whalers that use simple sketches to record a catch – offer something extra.

It is tempting to write off 19th century pictures as passé. A field relegated to the dusty corners of the art market, while contemporary art reigns supreme.

Showing some internal staining, browning and other soiling, this 1517 Lyon printing of one of the works of GB Castiglione, a humanist and sometime tutor to the future Elizabeth I, sports a contemporary English binding of blind-stamped calf.

The antiquities trade’s packed summer schedule got off to a bright start at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in London. The ancient art sale was the second to be held since the auction house reopened its London unit in 2016. Over the last two decades, Sotheby’s had sold ancient art through its New York saleroom only.

Catalogued as ‘after the antique’, this marble figure of Aphrodite was the unexpected star of Chiswick Auctions’ June 14 sale of antiquities and tribal art in London.

Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist, was engaged by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied to provide a pictorial record of his 1833-34 travels among the Indians of the Upper Missouri regions of North America.

“I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon”. Arguably the most famous words in archaeological history, they were supposedly uttered by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 as he unearthed a gold mask at Mycenae. Some 140 years later, portraits from antiquity remain powerful reminders of our ancient past.

More 19th century pictures will go under the hammer this summer at auction houses in London. Christie’s dedicated sale in King Street on July 13 is led by a collection of 46 Orientalist works.

Consigned from a deceased estate, a 19th century oil of a popular Venetian view topped Mitchells’ (20% buyer’s premium) June 1 auction in Cockermouth, Cumbria.

A miners‘ lamp lit up bidding at a Cotswold saleroom to set a record for a George Stephenson model.

Some of the more successful lots in a June 1 sale at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) of the first portion of the Richard Beagle collection of angling and sporting books were scarce accounts of early hunting trips in the Yukon and Wyoming.

ATG previews a couple of upcoming lots at London auctions.

Returning clients are usually welcome, but few more so than the couple who consigned two pieces of Red Anchor Chelsea to the sale at Lacy Scott & Knight’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) on June 10.