Front Page and News

West London saleroom Olympia Auctions has announced a new fundraising campaign to benefit the arms and armour department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The original watercolour draught for Sydney Harbour Bridge that featured on the front page of ATG No 2538 was bought by the Australian National Maritime Museum, it has been revealed.

Plates from a documented mid-19th century Sèvres dessert set sold for £36,000 at Golding Young & Mawer in Grantham on April 6.

A hitherto unrecorded set of four late 17th or early 18th century marble seasons statues took £230,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Summers Place Auctions in West Sussex on March 29.

The book trade has called for institutions to be more proactive in reporting missing items after two notebooks belonging to Charles Darwin were mysteriously returned to Cambridge University Library.

TEFAF Maastricht hosts 19 first-time exhibitors this year plus six new galleries in its Showcase.

A recently rediscovered miniature book by Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) is on offer at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (NYIABF) this month.

A Michelangelo (1475-1564) drawing previously declared a ‘National Treasure’ in France will be offered at Christie’s following the expiry of its export block.

Two European pictures have been temporarily stopped from being exported from the UK in the hope buyers can be found to keep them in the country.

Auction house Dix Noonan Webb (DNW) will be shortening its name to Noonans from the end of April.

The British Art Fair has been bought by Ramsay Fairs.

Self-portrait sold to National Portrait Gallery by dealer who also plans an exhibition

An Isnik fritware tile familiar to ATG readers made its second visit to the saleroom last week.

A work described as a ‘missing painting’ by the great Venetian master Titian (c.1485-1576), which was once owned by a succession of European royalty, has emerged for sale at Austrian auction house Dorotheum.

Swedish firm Auctionet, the online sales platform, has bought Lawrences in Somerset but the team at the Crewkerne auction house will remain in place.

The red tape of Brexit and the continued imposition of VAT on art imports is having a material impact on the British art market, according to a macro-level analysis of global art commerce.

A dreamy interwar architectural portrait of Pilgrims Hall, Essex, by Rex Whistler (1905-44) generated interest at Tennants (22% buyer’s premium) of Leyburn, North Yorkshire, on March 19.