Auctions

A group of more than 100 metal light fittings designed for a major French housing complex by Le Corbusier (aka Charles Edouard Jeanneret) has been unexpectedly withdrawn from a design sale at the French auction house Artcurial.

Ordrupgaard Museum in Copenhagen has purchased Vilhelm Hammershøi’s 'White Doors' for the hammer price of £1.2m, well above its £400,000-600,000 estimate.

A ring bought at a car boot sale for £10 in the 1980s was hammered down at £540,000 at a Sotheby’s auction.

One of the earliest coins in American history is coming to auction at Spink in New York.

Works by Keith Vaughan, John Minton, Christopher Wood and Paul Nash drew demand at a Woolley & Wallis auction featuring a prominent collection of 20th century British art.

When you hear that a team with ‘Auckland’ in the title won the first football World Cup, two obvious questions immediately come to mind: the first World Cup was surely won by Uruguay in 1930, wasn’t it? And... when have the Kiwis ever been any good at footy?

A major work by French Academy painter Edouard Joseph Dantan (1846-97) apparently unseen in public for over a century has emerged at an auction in Colchester.

Princess Diana’s stepmother, Chatelaine of Althorp, Dame Barbara Cartland’s daughter, or Acid Raine. The late Countess Spencer had a number of labels and, according to the Telegraph, she “seldom left anyone indifferent”.

Botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) is remembered for his directorship of Kew Gardens, his close friendship with Charles Darwin, and the more than 30 plants with the specific name ‘hookeri’ and ‘hookeriana’ in his honour.

A rediscovered sketch by Italian Renaissance master Parmigianino is to be offered at Bonhams in July.

You may have, possibly, maybe, perhaps, gleaned by now that 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest albums of all time.