Fine Art

Sir Winston Churchill’s towering presence in the art market was on full display last week as his auction record was broken four-and-a-half times over.

Little is known about the life of British artist William James (f.1754-71) other than he painted topographical views and may have been one of Canaletto’s studio assistants while the Venetian was visiting England.

This oil on board by the French artist Luigi Loir (1845-1916) depicting a beach scene, is one of the lots that will feature in Crescent City Auction Galleries’ three-day spring sale to be held from March 12-14 in New Orleans.

Traditional high-society portrait by Sir Oswald Birley finds modern-day auction fans including an overseas buyer

Dealer Sim rates this little-known painter so highly he calls him ‘the English Van Gogh’

Without the usual January influx of collectors, curators and dealers to the Big Apple, two significant art-buying dealer events decided to go virtual. For some exhibitors, the results were better than expected.

Algernon Mayow Talmage (1871-1939) is probably not the most familiar name in the canon of Modern British artists, but some believe he is undervalued.

A specialist in early European sculpture and works of art, Matthew Holder established his eponymous gallery in 2011 on London’s Portobello Road.

The first fine art sale of 2021 at Reeman Dansie (20% buyer’s premium) will be remembered for the spectacular £100,000 bid for a Mary Beale (1633-99) work.

The UK government has confirmed to ATG that it has “no plans to make changes to either the rates of Artist’s Resale Right that are applied or how the levy operates” following the post-Brexit trade deal agreed with the EU.

An evocative interior scene by one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession movement set a landmark price at Freeman’s of Philadelphia.

Collection in Cheltenham auction is latest in a series of valuable consignments with Ford family distinguished provenance

When astronaut Ed White was pictured during the first US spacewalk it was not only the first still photograph of a human in space, but also the first taken by another human – James McDivitt. Up to that moment all images released were taken by television or monitoring cameras.

A painting by Derby artist Ernest Townsend (1880-1944) was among the works that caused something of a surprise at auction early this year.

This watercolour and pencil drawing from 1833 which became the star lot at a recent sale at Nusser (25% buyer’s premium) in Munich had an imperial connection.

One of the attractions of the March 24-26 sale at Siebers in Stuttgart is a collection of 18 paintings by 19th century Polish artists who primarily belonged to the Munich school. The works were the property of a family of textile merchants, who moved from south Germany to Lodz, south west of Warsaw, in the 1930s.

In June 1925, only six months before his death, the Swiss painter Felix Vallotton and his wife visited the Périgord for the first time, which he declared to be “the most beautiful countryside on earth”.

Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842) was one of the most prolific painters of her era, creating up to 1000 works of art, the majority of them portraits.