Auctions

Earlier this year, the Paris auction house Artcurial sold an exceptional collection of Impressionist and Cubist works by the influential Czech avant-garde artist Otakar Kubin (1883-1969).

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

This watercolour bearing the signature of Norwich School artist John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) attracted a flurry of bids when it went under the hammer in Nottingham.

Renowned today for his fusion of Post- Impressionism and eastern European folk-art, the Jewish painter Mark Gertler (1891-1939) was inspired at the outset of his career by the northern and early-Italian Renaissance masters.

Distinctly patriotic in nature, stage and mail coach depictions started c.1815, reaching peak popularity in the later 1820s with the artist James Pollard (1792-1867).

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Brought into a West Sussex saleroom some months ago, a manuscript grimoire, or collection of magic spells, invocations and more practical advice on ailments and aspirations, offered quite a challenge to the cataloguer.

A private collection of more than 30 pieces of Pilkington’s Lancastrian lustre excelled when offered at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on October 10.

Headlines about antiquities today usually follow two paths: either highlighting the issue of looting or focusing on the huge sums treasures of the ancient world can command.

If bidders were to be lured to the ageless aspect of antiquities, one might think that a lamp which first lit the darkness two millennia ago would be hard to resist.

This medal documents a little-known moment in the history of the English Civil War. In 1648, following a revolt in the Parliamentary fleet, a number of ships went to Helvoetsluys in the western Netherlands and were organised as a Royalist squadron by Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82).

Taxidermy, having emerged in a few years from a dusty, rather unseemly subject to a rostrum hot topic, continues to flourish across the country.

After almost a decade of flatlining annual sales and the collapse of Mossgreen, Australia’s auctioneers are vocal about the improving market.

Investigation into wine storage is unusual success in computing library auction.