Front Page and News

Auctioneers and vendors are quickly discovering that Europe’s country houses, furnished with the routine period objects that no longer generate great excitement, can occasionally yield valuable souvenirs of a colonial past.

Former Bonhams and Christie’s specialist Mark Wilkinson is to join Sworders to launch new specialist sales at the Essex auction house. Wilkinson spent over 30 years at Christie’s and led its ‘interiors’ auctions at South Kensington.

Christie’s is to open a new Los Angeles premises this month in Beverly Hills to bolster its presence on the west coast of the US.

The art and antiques trade is taking its Brexit concerns directly to government with the submission of a series of policy documents asking that art market interests are recognised.

A former chairman of Christie’s South Kensington has written an open letter to owner François Pinault warning that his plans for the company could “gravely harm Christie’s in London”

An audacious robbery in Amsterdam has left a dealer without insurance cover for the theft of more than 250 Asian works of art.

A previously unknown complete set of Goya’s La Tauromaquia led Sotheby’s sale of Prints & Multiples in London on April 4.

Christie’s is to appeal last month’s French court ruling that declared Droit de Suite is a charge on the vendor rather than the buyer.

A large, late work by JMW Turner appears at Sotheby’s on July 5 with an estimate of £15-25m.

Surrey auction firm Fryer & Brown Auctioneers is set to be struck off the UK company register after it ceased trading in January.

A Petworth dealer has been the victim of a £2200 ‘card not present’ debit card fraud.

A judge has ruled against a London gallery over the seizure by UK Border Force of a Chinese silver tea set containing a tiny quantity of elephant ivory.

With this year marking the centenary of the sculptor’s death, Auguste Rodin is much in the news. While the Grand Palais in Paris is marking the event with a major exhibition, Fraysse et Associés sold a 2ft 1in (64cm) high lifetime cast bronze figural group for €1.55m (£1.35m) at Drouot on March 22.

The way Droit de Suite is applied in France was affirmed by a French court ruling last month.

Paris art and design fair PAD has lost its vetting committee following concerns about the brief time allowed to view stands.

Two pieces of early oak furniture deaccessioned from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York far outstripped modest expectations when offered for sale in California last month. The two tersely catalogued lots – both bequeathed to the museum in 1964 – appeared at Clars in Oakland on March 18. They sold to New York buyers.

In ATG’s coverage of Brexit in the past year, we regularly asked which EU-inspired law we could most live without. Unanimously the response was Artist’s Resale Right, a royalty on the resale of art hammered above €1000.

Enforcing its Scottish significance, a Renaissance gold pendant known as the Fettercairn Jewel has been bought by the National Museums Scotland.

A painting from the early career of French artist Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) appeared on the market for the first time in nearly a century at Gildings’ Market Harborough salerooms on March 28.

Firms urged to be aware of risk after string of email invoice frauds