Fine Art

This Italian marble bust of an emperor, catalogued as 17th century after the antique, provided a moment of saleroom drama at Sworders’ Fine Interiors auction in Stansted on September 10.

George du Maurier (1834-96) joined the staff at Punch magazine in 1865, drawing two ink cartoons a week until his eyesight deteriorated in 1891. His most common targets were the affected manners of Victorian society and Britain’s growing middle class in particular.

A gold, jade and rock crystal model of a sedan chair by Fabergé was hammered down at £380,000 last week – a new house record for a Gloucestershire auctioneer.

A busier than usual summer for the local housing market appeared to boost both vendor consignments and bidding at Market Harborough auctioneers Gildings (18% buyer’s premium).

Marking 20 years in business, Clark Art is holding a show featuring works by some of the key artists it has championed across two decades.

A portrait of an unidentified young man by the 18th century French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) will feature in the auction to be held by Skinner in Boston on September 27.

'La horde de barbares' (1934) by Surrealist painter Max Ernst (1891-1976) is offered in an exhibition dedicated to the German artist at M&L Fine Art.

One of the star turns in the summer sale in South Cerney of Martin Orsky’s wonderful library emerged towards the end of the day. This was a uniformly framed set of five stencil coloured woodcut broadsides, heightened with bodycolour and glitter and representing ‘The Five Senses’, sold at £30,000.

It was while working as a studio assistant to Lord Leighton in the early 1860s that John Emms (1841-1912) travelled to Lyndhurst in the New Forest, a trip that would define his career as a painter of dog portraits and sporting scenes.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales below £3000.

One of the highlights of Cottone’s sale in Geneseo, New York, on September 28 will be this marble head of Dionysos, a Roman copy of a late classical (4th century BC) Greek archetype.

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

The Dogs in Art sale is a regular fixture in Doyle’s calendar.

Four works by the pioneering British photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe (1853-1941) will feature in Swann Galleries’ sale of Photographs in New York on October 17.

Reinagle’s equine portrait painted in Reading brewery brings £15,000 at Salisbury sale

MADAM – Last year I bought a basket-case of a canvas from an artist’s estate for £400. I then spent many hundreds of pounds on a new support, re-stretching, cleaning and re-framing and eventually sold it for a profit.

These two portraits – one painted in colourful hues by a known hand, the other unattributed and executed in monochrome – were the star picture lots at a lively auction in East Sussex.