Front Page and News

A previously unrecorded painting attributed to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, the Italian Old Master known as il Guercino (1591-1666), has been consigned to Cambridge auction house Cheffins.

The Australian professional auctioneering body has called for all auctioneers to introduce client accounts – known as trust accounts in Australia – to avoid a repeat of the grim situation at failed firm Mossgreen.

Dawson’s Auctioneers & Valuers is expanding into the capital with a new valuation office in north London.

Leading Roseberys’ inaugural stand-alone sale of 20th century decorative arts on January 23 – the first under new head of department Fiona Baker – was this large Art Deco ceramic vase and cover (right) by the important French Art Deco ceramicist René Buthaud (1886-1986).

A 17th century long-necked sealed ‘shaft and globe’ wine bottle sold for an unexpected £8300 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) at Barbara Kirk Auctions in Penzance on January 23.

London coins and medals specialist Dix Noonan Webb is changing its management structure.

An Arctic Medal with a provenance indicating it was awarded to a member of the doomed Franklin Expedition which vanished searching for the elusive Northwest Passage has surfaced at a Surrey auction house.

Mossgreen is only the latest in a list of auctioneers that have gone under owing money to its core customers – consignors.

Chiswick Auctions has taken on a trio of books specialists from Bloomsbury Auctions as the west London saleroom kicks off 2018 with a new sales programme.

Paul Sumner’s hopes of a restructure of Australian saleroom Mossgreen melted away last week after his proposed investment plan failed and the administrator began winding down the business.

Rising rents and business rates in central London have forced Rountree Tryon Galleries to downsize.

Sworders is to sell the primary contents of North Mymms Park, Hertfordshire – including a collection of European tapestries that have been at the property for over a century.

A precedent-setting legal dispute over a $10m (£7.2m) fee relating to the 2014 sale of a $210m Paul Gauguin painting has been won by auctioneer turned art adviser Simon de Pury.

The annual TEFAF art market report has been scrapped in favour of a number of smaller, focused reports.

London is to host a viewing of a small oil painting by Paul Cézanne ahead of its sale in the US.

The BBC’s Antiques Roadshow is reviewing its approach to ivory after campaigners called for a ban of ivory objects on screen.

A collection of remarkable Nelson memorabilia from the Battle of Trafalgar on offer at Sotheby’s includes a large fragment of the Union Jack believed to have flown from HMS Victory at Trafalgar.

How art and antiques can learn from the world of luxury goods and take advantage of Brexit will be the focus of the LAPADA Conference next month.

Donations to museums via inheritance tax schemes grew 22% in the past year, according to the latest Arts Council annual report.

Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R Vance Jr, has formed an Antiquities Trafficking Unit to focus on potentially looted artefacts in New York.