Auctions

Researching Old Master paintings is sometimes likened to putting together the pieces of a jigsaw. But for one upcoming work, it seems this was quite literally the case.

A drawing offered at a Paris auction with an attribution to Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528) was hammered down at €1.13m (£980,000).

A large oil on panel map by MacDonald Gill celebrating the presence of stationer WH Smith on the British high street in the 1920s was hammered down at £50,000 in Gloucestershire.

Despite the general controversy about the material – one that has momentarily taken a back seat as Brexit eats parliamentary time – an exceptional ivory work of art still has the capacity to impress in the saleroom.

Bid to £19,700 in a recent sale was one of 100 signed, large paper firsts of Oscar Wilde’s 'The Importance of Being Earnest' published by Leonard Smithers in 1899.

In the proud tradition of UK provincial auction houses, the 2000-lot, three-day sale at Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) offered a world of artefacts from way beyond its Lakeland base of Cockermouth.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period April 11-17, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Given that the sale ran to a huge 1139 lots, the April 2-4 dispersal in Harrogate of the first part of the library of Robert James Hayhurst may be considered to have done well in achieving a selling rate of 85% at that gathering of Elzevir and other early printed works.

Detailed down to pneumatic tyres, knock-off hub caps and rack-and-pinion steering, the clockwork toy of Alfa Romeo’s P2, the world-beating racing car between 1924-30, was produced by CIJ (Compagnie Industrielle du Jouet) from 1924-35.

Estimated at just £50-80, an Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion sold for £3000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at a Spink auction in London on April 10.

A late 19th century gold bone-handled Arab dagger was hammered down at £4100 at the inaugural sale of Knightsbridge auction house Kings Russell (22% buyer’s premium).

Something of a roll call for the great and good across the British 19th-20th century arts scene, Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Decorative Arts: Design Since 1860 sale included such names as George Washington Jack, Sir Alfred Gilbert, Christopher Dresser, William de Morgan and Robert Bartlett.

George Catlin’s watercolour sketches of North American Indians, reported in ATG No 2387, were the star turns as far as original artworks were concerned at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 28. However, two original, signed caricatures by Max Beerbohm also brought good results.

A bound volume of early works on a famous automaton chess player, featured in ATG No 2387, was not the only lot in a recent Cumbrian sale to produce a handsome return.

This trio of clocks – all classic collectors’ pieces – went well above estimate at spring sales.

British and Irish book auctions: April 16-27, 2019