Fine Art

“Isn’t it possible that the Irish could be just as brilliant in the visual arts as they have been in music and literature?”

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, all sold below £700.

British modernist Kenneth Lauder (1916-2004) used to entreat his opticians to create spectacles that would allow him to see the world upside down. They refused, but he remained determined to view life in a different way.

This bronze sculpture by Louis-Albert Lefeuvre (1845- 1924), Les Fondeurs du Moyen Age, was one of the highlights of a single-owner collection sold by Alderfer Auction in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.

An art dealership that sold a portrait of Napoleon’s brother-in-law to The Frick Collection in New York has strongly criticised Italy’s decision to retrospectively rescind its export licence.

A little-known Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) sculpture of the British actress Sandra Dorne took an estimate-topping £11,000 at HRD Auction Rooms (20% buyer’s premium) on the Isle of Wight.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, sold for under £900.

Just a month after the Second World War, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was in Paris working at the lithography workshop of Fernand Mourlot (1895-1988). It was the beginning of a collaboration that would last almost three decades and produce more than 400 different graphic images and editions.

An intriguing item with important international artistic links is on offer at Towy Fairs’ Carmarthen Antiques and Fleamarket on Sunday, September 9.

August is the month when Scotland takes it up a notch while the rest of the art world has a breather.

Henry Moore has been in the UK headlines recently thanks to the BBC Fake or Fortune? programme which revealed a watercolour sketch to be an authentic early lost work by the British sculptor and artist.

An Indian School work guided at £100-150 was the star turn at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Taunton in Somerset on August 2.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Mayfair gallery Connaught Brown is staging the first solo exhibition of French Neo-Impressionist and Symbolist painter Henri Martin (1860-1943) to take place in London for a number of years.