Fine Art

A black chalk drawing of a skeleton drew an extraordinary competition at a German auction house Lempertz at the end of last month. Estimated at €3000-3500, it attracted at least 15 bidders and was eventually knocked down at €420,000 (£381,820) to a French dealer.

It was a case of interesting artist, distinctive painting and intriguing subject that sparked a strong bidding competition at a Glasgow sale.

Three works by Ipswich painter perform well in rescheduled East Anglian-themed auction

Under the changed regulations in Germany it would have been possible for Dr Andreas Sturies (20% buyer’s premium) in Düsseldorf to hold the spring auction in front of an audience.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a George Armfield hunting scene.

Shortly before the UK lockdown, Cumbrian saleroom Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium inc VAT) offered works from the collection of The Shorthorn Society, a body that promotes the famous breed of cattle in the UK and Ireland.

A portrait of a 16th century Protestant theologian and reformer surfaced at a sale at Ginhart (23% buyer’s premium) in Tegernsee, some 35 miles south of the Bavarian capital Munich.

While the Japanese woodblock print artist Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764) is credited with the first use of one-point perspective in the depiction of interior spaces, a technique previously known only in Western art, his colleague Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814) achieved even greater fame when he mastered the creation of perspective prints of outdoor scenes, known as Uki-e.

Painting went through lengthy ownership saga before being returned to family and then sold.

A group of portrait miniatures sold recently by John Nicholson’s (30/25% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey included this English school image, c.1700, of William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster.

One of the central attractions in Rome is the Piazza Navona and the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers). It was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1650 at the behest of Pope Innocent X.

This pastel of Venice by Leonard Squirrell (1893-1979) forms part of an online exhibition that features him and two other contemporaries also from Suffolk, Harry Becker (1865-1928) and George Thomas Rope (1846-1929).

'Composition bleue' (1940-42), an oil by French artist Georges Folmer (1895-1977), is on offer at Waterhouse & Dodd’s online retrospective 'Il n’y a pas de hasard en Art'.

Turning heads at Bonhams Knightsbridge’s sale of Modern British art was a group of 22 pen and ink drawings by Cecil Beaton (1904-80) which formed part of the photographer’s 'The Book of Beauty' published in 1930.

Work on paper outperforms more traditional works at Bonhams Knightsbridge lockdown sale of Modern British art