Surrey

'The Vintage and Classic Arms Fair' will run at Kempton Park Racecourse in Sunbury, Middlesex, on Sunday, March 24.

Drawing interest from the US was a portrait of a fierce-looking Scottish laird by John Pettie (1839-93).

MADAM – Regarding Bid Barometer, ATG No 2377, your readers might be interested to know that the portrait painting featured is in fact a self-portrait of Helen Lessore (of Beaux Arts Gallery fame).

A trademark nocturnal scene by Victorian painter John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93) got away on low estimate for £80,000 at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Haslemere in Surrey.

Bi-monthly Sunbury event has carved out a strong niche – a picture special.

Jane Alexander of Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs reports that 2018 was another busy year for her fairs at the Dorking Halls, particularly as she has managed to organise a second room at this Surrey venue.

Posters covering band or artist appearances during the embryonic days of their development are proving very popular at auction – a trend underlined by a group of 1966 Pink Floyd designs.

The bronze pieces produced by Rene Lalique are perhaps less well-known than the master’s jewellery and glass but seldom so under-rated that they are consigned to the dustbin, as was the case with this c.1910 hand mirror, below.

The toy fair at Sandown Park in November is usually “the busiest one of the four we hold there each year”, says Barry Potter, founder in 1979 of BP Fairs, which first launched at this racecourse venue 31 years ago.

Distinctly patriotic in nature, stage and mail coach depictions started c.1815, reaching peak popularity in the later 1820s with the artist James Pollard (1792-1867).

Pictures, trophies and other mementos were among the contents from a historic nursing home in south-west London dispersed at Ewbank’s (22.5% buyer’s premium).

Figurative art was the other big seller in early September, led by the waxwork of Medardo Rosso’s sculpture Bambina Ridente (see last week’s News pages) which topped a successful week of sales at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) when it more than doubled the top estimate at £180,000.

There is a full load of arms fairs this month including the Antiques Arms Fair at Olympia on September 29 (see Dealers’ Diary, ATG No 2359) and the now triannual Kempton Vintage and Classic Arms Fair. Launched at Kempton Park Racecourse last year, it followed the demise in 2016 of the specialist event held for many years at the National Shooting Centre in Bisley.