North America

A portrait of Miss Virginia Gammell, an Edwardian society lady, is among the highlights at Mark Murray’s summer exhibition taking place in New York.

Christie’s has added a top-end sale of 19th century art to its calendar of New York auctions in October.

Dating from 1944, the ink, watercolour and gouache artwork shown belowwas made by Russell H Tandy to illustrate the cover of The Secret in the Old Attic, the 21st of Carolyn Keene’s ‘Nancy Drew’ mysteries.

Billed as “the world’s most valuable illustrated book”, the ex-Duke of Portland set of Audubon’s Birds of America offered by Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was sold for $8.3m (£6.24m), a price only once bettered at auction.

For many years now, German Enigma code machines have been making big, sums at auction, but in the Bonhams New York June 12 sale a slim codebook relating to their use also prompted a much, much higher than expected and six-figure bid.

The earliest publication in any form of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar came with its inclusion as part of the 1623 First Folio, and in a recent US sale a bound set of the 22pp that it occupied in that great work prompted a six-figure bid.

In the immediate post-war era the work of the French designer-decorator Jean Royère (1902-81) took a turn to embrace a more organic or ‘biomorphic’ style.

The Federalist…, a collection of essays first published in New York newspapers in the years immediately following independence, is today recognised as a seminal work on American political theory and a cornerstone of constitutional governance.

Post-war material is attracting growing interest across all sectors of the art market. A pioneer was the Design sale that championed the creations of designers and taste makers from the second half of the 20th century and beyond.

The Antiquities Dealers’ Association (ADA) has warned that “long-term damage is being inflicted on both the trade and museums” by the growing number of legal cases surrounding antiquities with long North American provenances.

US saleroom Leslie Hindman Auctioneers has hired a new chief executive and sold a stake to a private equity firm to help fund expansion.

Demands for ‘looted’ items to be returned could be ‘disastrous’ for the dealers, say antiquities trade bodies...

London dealer Daniel Katz has sold two bronze sculptures to the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, one by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and the other by Rodin’s assistant, model and lover Camille Claudel (1864-1943).

The antiques trade might have a darker side but there is also a certain black humour to it all.

Science fiction and fantasy were among the lifelong principal collecting interests of the late Stanley Simon, a postal worker from Queens. In a recent 19th and 20th century literature sale held in his home city of New York a number of his books brought record bids.