Christie's

Written off by some as a dying area, the latest Old Master series in London defied the naysayers with encouraging results during its traditional ‘grand finale’ slot at the end of the London sales season.

A record-breaking Canaletto (1697-1768) drawing was the toast of the capital’s Old Masters drawings sales.

Marc Lescarbot’s Nova Francia… of 1609 is an account of French settlements in North America and what we now think of as Nova Scotia and Canada. It predates the more famous first accounts of Champlain’s voyages and discoveries by three years.

Translated from a Paris version that had appeared earlier in that same year of 1535, an 8pp German newsletter giving an account of the execution of Thomas More sold for $11,500 (£9055) as part of the Eric Caren archive at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.

A number of the French auction rooms have released their sales figures for the first half of the year, with Christie’s Paris operation taking the top slot.

In ATG No 2292, I noted as a record the £13,000 sale of a copy of Thomas Wright’s Original theory… of the universe… (1750), as part of the Christie’s April 26 sale of the Beltrame library.

West London‘s Chiswick Auctions is to open a new showroom in South Kensington manned by at least eight former Christie’s staff.

A pair of lions from the funerary monument of Charles V of France was the toast of Christie’s Exceptional sale in London on July 6.

The latest Old Master sales in London put in a solid performance with the overall total from last week’s auction series running at £115m (including premium) with one day sale still to take place at the time of going to press.

Like many of the world’s major art markets these days, Paris concentrates activity in the Asian art field into series at specific times of the year in an attempt to attract those all-important buyers from Mainland China.

A moment of good old-fashioned saleroom drama emerged at Christie’s antiquities sale on July 5 when an Etruscan bronze mirror, estimated at £10,000-15,000, sold at £390,000 (plus 25/20/12% buyer’s premium). The buyer was a European institution.

Preserved in a fine contemporary binding of crimson morocco gilt that seems likely to have been specially commissioned by the artist from Pasqual Carsi y Vidal, a leading Madrid binder, a rare presentation set of Goya’s Los Caprichos prints sold for $500,000 (£393,700) at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.

The collection of Tiffany jewels offered by Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 20 was the finest at auction in recent memory.

The “oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today”, according to Printing and the Mind of man, is that written around 300BC by the Greek mathematician, Euclid of Alexandria.