Sotheby's

Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald were among the financial big-hitters when a third part of the extensive Maurice F Neville collection of modern literature was sold by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on April 24.

“We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold” are the opening words of Hunter S Thompson’s notorious and loosely autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing Las Vegas…

More than 130 original artworks by the artist, sometimes savage political cartoonist and stage designer, Gerald Scarfe, were offered by Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on April 5.

A mid-19th century oil painting depicting in detail a scene at the height of the Australian gold rush is a potential highlight of a Sotheby’s Australia sale next month.

Much like René Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s successful career as a glassmaker overshadowed his genius as a goldsmith. Both men created jewellery that have come to define Art Nouveau in France and North America.

A late 19th century/early 20th century ruby cameo and baroque pearl pendant once formed part of the celebrated jewellery collection assembled by Ganna Walska (1887-1984). It sold for a multi-estimate £55,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of fine jewels in Bond Street on March 22.

While Degas’ youthful drawings produced some notable individual prices in Drawings Week, it is the classic charcoal and pastel drawings of Parisian dancers and workers from his mature years that are the most commercially popular (the current work on paper record is the premium-inclusive $37m/ £23.35m/€29m paid for Danseuse au repos of 1879 at Sotheby’s New York in 2008).

A previously unknown complete set of Goya’s La Tauromaquia led Sotheby’s sale of Prints & Multiples in London on April 4.

A large, late work by JMW Turner appears at Sotheby’s on July 5 with an estimate of £15-25m.

Enforcing its Scottish significance, a Renaissance gold pendant known as the Fettercairn Jewel has been bought by the National Museums Scotland.