South-east England

Said to date from the 12th-14th century, an incomplete and dampstained Middle Eastern medical manuscript sold for £70,000 at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) on February 22.

Scottish Colourist George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931) is best known for his strong and vibrant still-lifes but landscapes also feature significantly in his oeuvre – and collectors will spend big to acquire the highest-quality examples.

“A fabulous example of how an auctioneer can sell these collections so successfully outside of London,” said Dreweatts’ (25% buyer’s premium) managing director Jonathan Pratt in the wake of Donnington Priory’s latest auction of European furniture and works of art.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s magnetism remains as forceful as ever in UK salerooms.

Sarah Colegrave is an art dealer and consultant working in London and Oxfordshire. She carries a stock of mainly British 19th and 20th century paintings, drawings, watercolours and sculptures. She next stands at the Wilton House Antiques Fair (March 6-8) and The Open Art Fair (March 18-24).

Forty-plus dealers will be converging on the Holt Hotel at Steeple Aston, near Oxford, to stand at Antiques@The Holt on Saturday and Sunday March 14-15.

The so-called Hornby Castle Chair, a 4ft 7in (1.38m) high oak open armchair c.1580-1600, sold for £35,000 plus premium at the latest Oak Interior sale at Bonhams in Oxford.

This early-20th century portrait by Ronald Ossory Dunlop (1894-1973) depicts the actor and artist Jean Shepeard (1904-89).

Fawley Hill fair relocates down the road to the Meadows where the royal regatta is held

The Oak Interior sale at Bonhams in Oxford on February 19 included two substantial private collections consigned for sale from the US.

Sold for £4600 in a February 6 sale held in the Chichester salerooms of Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium) was an album of cut-paper work produced by Elizabeth Cobbold c.1810-20.

New Midhurst owner keeps the Emmott Promotions name going

Two items in focus at Midhurst

The market for both film and music posters is booming but original artwork for such designs can also be a very collectable option for buyers.

According to patent documents dated February 1928, Woodlite headlamps invented by a William G Woods of Los Angeles were said to give the driver better illumination of distant objects ahead.

While furniture and books fully justified its title, The Oxford Library Sale at Mallams (22.5% buyer’s premium) was led by a surprise star: a rather lowly regarded gesso bust of the sort that would have been a minor decoration to such a room.

Shin-hanga, meaning ‘new prints’, emerged in Japan during the early 20th century. Aimed at Western tastes, the artistic movement combined the traditional colourful woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e with nostalgic and romanticised Japanese subjects.

As well as painting sunny pictures of children on the beaches of Cornwall, Dorothea Sharp (1874-1955) frequently turned her paintbrush to still-lifes.

This early-20th century snow scene, below, was painted by the French artist Paul Elie Gernez (1888-1948). He was primarily a naturalist painter of still-lives, landscapes and seascapes, and spent much of his life in Honfleur in Normandy.