Fine Art

Drawings Week in the French capital included a wide variety of styles, eras and value. Pictured here is a selection of highlights and some more affordable items from the vast array of works on paper of all types offered during Drawings Week in Paris in late March.

'Battlefield' is among the works Piano Nobile includes in an exhibition of Paul Nash paintings at Frieze New York.

This gouache is one of around 10 drawings, watercolours and gouaches by René Gruau, the Italian-born fashion illustrator who was renowned for his Paris haute couture and promotional illustrations, which will feature in Tajan’s Paris auction of modern drawings on May 15.

A watercolour of Lindisfarne Priory off the Northumberland coast sold for more than 12 times its guide at Taunton saleroom Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium).

UK fine art dealer Dickinson features a single-owner collection of 20th century masters at TEFAF New York Spring next month.

A drawing by the Indian artist Francis Newton Souza (1924- 2004) which he created on the verge of finding international fame in the 1950s drew intense bidding at a recent Dreweatts (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) auction.

Not everything in the spring drawings sales required a six-figure bank balance to purchase. Plenty of more affordable works appeared across all the Paris rooms – both Drouot and the independents (and, of course, in the various dealers shows and fairs). Pictured here are some works within the reach of less elevated budgets.

The ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ is currently on show at Paris Contemporary art dealership Galerie Kamel Mennour opposite a work more than 400 years its junior.

A look at the latest photograph auction highlights, potential sale stars to come, fairs coming up and a camera and equipment spotlight.

Photographica 2019 is a destination for collectors of classic cameras. The fair hosts up to 135 tables for buying, selling and swapping classic and antique cameras from across the country.

'Electricité', pictured below, is one of a limited edition portfolio of 10 photogravures after Man Ray’s Rayographs from a 1931 commercial commission from the artist by the Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution d’Electricité.

Flemish Old Masters and Modern works combined to boost takings at two spring sales held north and south in England.

A significant collection of pictures by the Victorian watercolourist Albert Goodwin (1845-1932) was a near sell-out at auction in Suffolk and generated just under £120,000.

Philippe Fortuné Durand is regarded as the first professional photographer in France.

After abandoning his early career as a contributor to Punch and the Illustrated London News, Myles Birket Foster (1825-99) went on to establish his reputation as a painter of technically skilled and highly polished watercolours, depicting landscapes and rustic subjects from Scotland to the Mediterranean.

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

When it comes to early or vintage photographs the interest is often centred around the social history of the material – the camera’s ability to document past events, be they special occasions or scenes of everyday life.