Fine Art

When Cecil Beaton photographed the Wyndham-Quin sisters in 1950, he chose to copy both the setting and poses used 50 years earlier by John Singer Sargent in The Wyndham Sisters.

Old Master sheets such as this lively example of satyr and Bacchus studies are believed to have served as a repertoire of motifs used in paintings or prints by the artist or their studio.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Sometimes there is no need for hyperbole: the story behind the auction on March 15 at Neumeister (27% buyer’s premium) in Munich was quite remarkable in itself.

A cast zinc figure of Odysseus is one of the prominent works of art at the Prussian Sale that Lempertz is holding in Berlin on April 24.

Still Life with Autumn Fruit and Bouquet of Flowers by the Swiss artist Johannes Dünz was probably conceived as one of four seasonal paintings.

An eight-lot sale in New York titled A Family Collection: Works on Paper, Van Gogh to Freud raised a premium-inclusive total of $25.3m (£18.2m).

For the first time in almost 30 years, Wendl (21% buyer’s premium) in Rudolstadt was forced to hold a sale without a public view and in an empty room.

The highest price at the sale of Modern and Contemporary art at Döbritz (22% buyer’s premium) in Frankfurt on March 6 was achieved for a mixed-media composition by the German artist Thomas Bayrle.

This copy of the Uffizi’s Medici Apollo (Apollino) is signed for the Italian sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (c.1716-99).

It is often said there is a strict hierarchy for the prices of game bird pictures by the great ornithological artist Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935).

MADAM – In September 1989, a valuable painting was left by my garage in central Cambridge.

MADAM – Can your readers identify the workshop responsible for this ‘Last Supper’ triptych of glazed tiles, set on a slate and mortar matrix?

Tennants offered a well-received 70-lot sale dedicated to views mostly of Yorkshire from a private collection last month.

Oil bought by the vendor directly from the artist Lucy Harwood features a still-life on the reverse

Although in his day Walter Schulz-Matan was regarded as an important representative of Neue Sachlichkeit and Magic Realism, his market value with today’s collectors is way below the level of many of his colleagues.

Depiction of one McNeill sister sets a record while portrait of her sibling also appears at another auction

Among the highlights of last week’s Islamic and Indian art sales in London was this late Safavid portrait of a mercenary in the Persian army painted in the cosmopolitan city of Isfahan c.1680-90.

The London Original Print Fair (LOPF) has modified its operations to suit the current restrictions and plans a Print Week in dealers’ galleries next month.