Auctions

MK Auctions are selling a Flemish verdure tapestry at their sale on May 5.

Featuring only 22 lots, Sotheby’s latest sale of Orientalist art was a small affair but one that definitely packed a big punch.

A major new marketplace or simply a case of wishful thinking? That was the question as the Association of Accredited Auctioneers (Triple-A) and their Beijing-based partners, Huachen Auctions, held a much-heralded auction in south east China.

Recent years have seen a massive increase in the offerings and prices realised by banknotes.

This previously unrecorded late work by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97), ‘Landscape with Rainbow’, sold for £125,000 at Bellmans in Wisborough Green, West Sussex.

The Charles Le Brun oil on canvas discovered hanging in the Paris Hôtel Ritz proved to be the high point of Christie’s latest sale of Old Master and 19th century paintings in Paris.

A new auction high for Qing Kangxi porcelain was established in Sotheby’s latest spring sale series in Hong Kong.

Say the name Sister Wendy Beckett and most people will immediately picture the unique figure of the elderly nun as she tours the world’s art galleries, talking intensely to the TV camera.

This Chinese gilt-bronze figure of Maitreya dating to the Qing dynasty was among the Asian highlights on offer at The Canterbury Auction Galleries’ latest sale.

A letter written by pioneering scientist Dr Francis Crick containing what is probably the first description he gave of the discovery of DNA has been sold for a world auction record.

Familiarly known as the Bay Psalm Book, one of the finest surviving copies of the first book printed in what is now the USA is expected to become the world’s most expensive book at Sotheby’s New York in November.

This 15-star American War Naval Jack used in the Anglo-American War of 1812, is thought to be the first of its kind to be offered at auction.

Among the most elusive of all Royal Doulton HN series figures is the curious model of a winged cherub astride a crocodilian known simply as ‘Boy on a Crocodile’.

Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers are selling hundreds of items from Fort William, a quirky Tudor Revival-style mansion in Lismore, Co Waterford, Ireland.

Christie’s are to hold auctions in Shanghai from this autumn, making them the first international fine art auction company to win a licence to operate independently in mainland China.

The latest mixed-owner sale of Old Masters, furniture and objets d’art in Paris held at Drouot by Beaussant Lefèvre saw some estimate-crushing prices and two pre-emptions by the Louvre.

The spring catalogue sale at Tennants of Leyburn closed with 14 pieces of furniture either by or in the manner of Gillows.

A number of Edvard Munch (1863-1944) prints at the latest specialist prints sales in London showed how much buyers are in tune with the artist’s ‘personal touch’.

This pair of full-size library globes was the pick of more than 800 lots from a Pembrokeshire country house sold by Carmarthen firm Peter Francis.