Museum acquisitions

This John Constable (1776-1837) portrait has been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland from the estate of the artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) through the Government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme.

An 18th century casket made from fragments of Chinese porcelain has been bought by the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham.

An English provincial museum has been able to acquire an export-stopped Old Master painting for a knockdown price of £1.61m thanks to the vendor striking a tax deal.

An exceptional piece of 17th century Japanese export lacquer with a provenance to match has produced the highest auction price in France this year when it was sold to the Rijksmuseum for a hammer price of €5.9m (£5.26m).

The Christopher Dresser Society will be launched at Teesside University on June 20.

The original autograph draft manuscript for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1879 poem ‘Binsey Poplars’ has been acquired by the Bodleian Libraries.

The Design Museum has made its first significant fashion acquisition thanks to a donation by Jill Ritblat through the Art Fund.

The collection of close to 500 silver and gold objects donated to the Ashmolean museum in Oxford by the late dealer-collector Michael Wellby has been described as the most important bequest of its type for over a century.

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has acquired an important collection of letters, photos and documents relating to Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank.

An appeal launched by the Art Fund to save a Poussin painting for the nation has hit its £3.9m target.

Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has announced that it had succeeded in an eight-month campaign to save Edouard Manet’s ‘Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus’ for the nation.

This slipware charger by Bernard Leach has been acquired by the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston.

Antiques Roadshow and Midlands auction house Gildings have conspired again to find a second William Burges brooch.

The Tate are to acquire a major photographic collection depicting images of London, which will go on display in a dedicated exhibition, entitled ‘Another London’, at Tate Britain at the end of July.

SOTHEBY’S Paris have announced that they have negotiated a private treaty sale to the Louvre for an undisclosed sum of a pair of silver tureens, covers, liners and stands by the French goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste.

THOMAS Grant Dixon formed his Worcester collection from 1940-70. This discerning collector was a great friend of H. Rissik Marshall, the famed Worcester collector and author whose collection now resides in the Ashmolean at Oxford.

IN a private sale negotiated by Christie’s, the Victoria and Albert Museum has acquired this remarkable 16th century tankard made for the Ottoman court.

THE Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum have secured this unique piece of furniture at a price of £850,000.

THANKS to a clever bit of detective work by one of its curators, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has been able to reunite a porcelain cup and saucer that have separated for over 200 years.

IN his day the work of the Lincolnshire woodcarver Thomas Wilkinson Wallis (1822-1903), who set up business in Louth in 1843, was favourably compared with that of the most famous English woodcarver of all, Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721).