Fine Art

The historic but compact English city of Lichfield and historic photographic views of China are not an immediately obvious fit but two auction houses made the connection recently.

A major consignment of Old Masters is coming up at Sotheby’s New York which the auction house said is poised to break the record for any singleowner sale in this category.

March is traditionally the month for drawings and works on paper in Paris, a magnet that attracts enthusiasts from around the world to the French capital.

Among the watercolours attracting interest at the earlier part of the year were four works by Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch (1869-1958) that appeared at Lincoln saleroom Golding Young & Mawer (24% buyer’s premium).

A Roman marble bust of the tyrannical Emperor Commodus attracted a flurry of bids at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford.

A gold and enamel Dent pocket watch given by Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, to the Italian opera singer Giuseppina Grassini surfaced for sale at an auction in Austria

Gladys Hynes (1888-1958), an overlooked Irish-British artist, pacifist, feminist and Irish Republican, will be the subject of a forthcoming book by Jennifer FitzGerald and Sean Mark and I to be published by Yale University Press in 2026.

Focus on two flower paintings created in Kent by different artists but offered at the same local saleroom

Born in London, artist Tom Roberts (1856-1931) became famous on the other side of the world painting the people and landscape of Australia.

Georges Van Cauwenbergh is the director of Artimo Fine Arts Gallery, in the renowned Sablon antiques district of Brussels.

Works painted by the man behind famous comic characters are sold at auction alongside those he acquired