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CANTERBURY Auction Galleries are to embark on a new sales format that will double the number of fine sales held annually and offer every lot to a potential worldwide audience of Internet bidders.

FROM 30 June, the £20 banknote carrying the portrait of composer Sir Edward Elgar is to be finally withdrawn from circulation.

CONTRIBUTING handsomely to the largest grossing sale ever conducted by a regional auctioneer, this 7in (18cm) high Chinese Imperial white jade bell sold for £2m hammer at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury on May 19 – the first day of a two-catalogue Asian art sale.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

A SPECIAL addition to Christie’s mid-season Old Masters and 19th century art sale in New York on June 9 is what the auctioneers describe as “an exceptional selection of European paintings and sculpture” from the former Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in Manhattan.

CONSIDERED the finest work by the Italian Baroque master Domenico Zampieri, Il Domenichino (1581-1641), in private hands, this painting of St John the Evangelist has been saved for the nation. It has gone on display in the National Gallery's Baroque rooms.

SWISS-based animal philanthropist Jeanne Marchig is suing Christie's over the female portrait sold as '19th century German' at Christie's New York in 1998 for $19,500 but now called La Bella Principessa and claimed as a £100m work by Leonardo da Vinci.

Despite recent developments in the case against the notorious Johnson family, including the recovery of stolen antiques in Worcestershire, innumerable valuable works of art remain at large.

• Stoker's great granddaughter puts unique cache up for sale • Collection includes, letters, photos and even table waresA remarkable collection of documents and artefacts relating to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 will be sold by Bamfords of Derby on May 26. The cache of largely unseen material has been entered for sale by the great granddaughter of Edward Archibald McKenzie, a crewman on the expedition supply ship Terra Nova.

There has been a happy ending to the century-long story of a missing pub sign painted in 1899 by Arts and Crafts artist Walter Crane for the Fox and Pelican pub in the Hampshire village of Grayshott.

IF major auctions in New York are anything to go by, then the amount of money being spent on blue-chip pieces of Modern and Contemporary art is now almost back to the level seen before the market crashed 18 months ago.

• Stock book should help rewrite story of leading artistAN overlooked item in a box of magazines sold at auction for a few pounds could help rewrite the story of one of the most sought after of England’s Victorian painters.

WHEN Shropshire auctioneers Mullock’s sold a dealer’s stock for nearly 50 per cent above estimate, they thought that the vendor’s sole reaction would be one of satisfaction. Instead, they found themselves in court and having to pay out hundreds of pounds in compensation and costs.

MORE than 130 pieces of Caughley blue and white porcelain from a Worcestershire collection sold for £56,000 when it returned to Shropshire for sale at Halls in Shrewsbury.

SOTHEBY’S first quarter results have been boosted by February’s healthy Contemporary and Impressionist sales in London, showing the company on a decisive upward curve after last year’s slump in revenues.

THE issue of the Manchester Art Gallery’s missing Eric Gill sculpture has been resolved, Cheshire auctioneer Adam Partridge has told ATG.

THE ringleader of the notorious Johnson family gang, who played the key role in a series of audacious thefts at stately homes across the UK, faces an increased prison sentence.

ATG’s parent company, ATG Media, has agreed to provide the technology for the first live internet bidding site in Germany.

THE return of free-spending at the very top end of the art market continued apace at last week’s Impressionist and Modern sales series in New York as boom-time levels of bidding were seen on the blockbuster lots. For the second time this year, a new record was set for any artwork ever sold at auction.