Fine Art

Based on his own 50-year collecting odyssey, Iain MacPhail has privately published a hardback catalogue raisonné of the etchings created by the prolific Victorian and early 20th century book illustrators Charles Maurice and Edward Julius Detmold. Here he talks to ATG about his collecting passion.

The biggest surprise of Wendl’s (21% buyer’s premium) extensive general sale in Rudolstadt on October 25-28 was the seemingly never-ending exchange of bids for an early 18th century Old Master which had a starting price of €900.

A private collector in London had his work cut out to secure a painting on offer for €2000-3000 at Nagel (29.5% buyer’s premium) in Stuttgart.

Mother of pearl and olivewood devotional objects were made in Jerusalem in large quantities as tourism to the Holy Land took off in the late 19th and early 20th century.

A bronze from Frederick Edward McWilliam’s (1909-92) Women of Belfast series of sculptures sold for £37,000 at Halls (24% buyer’s premium) on December 6.

Up in North Yorkshire, it was a view of a landscape down south that led Tennants’ (24% buyer’s premium) British, European & Sporting Art sale.

A dealer at Old Spitalfields Antiques Market was surprised by an early morning chance discovery.

It was around 1860 that the trained artist François Willème (1830-1905) began to experiment with photography as a way to create sculpture.

Without doubt, the sensation of the German auction season was the emergence of a sketchbook belonging to the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich at Grisebach (32/27% buyer’s premium) in Berlin.

Trained at the Krakow School of Fine Arts as well as the Paris École des Beaux Arts, Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929) is credited for the rise in popularity of symbolism in late 19th and early 20th-century Poland.

A wide range of eastern European works is increasingly attracting strong demand at auction

Works by the Turkish artist Mubin Orhon (1924-81) can be a valuable proposition.

An eastern European picture that commanded bidding at a recent UK regional auction was a trademark painting by Polish artist Jan Lebenstein (1930-99).

A design for a swan-shaped pendant suspended by a gracefully curved neck and bearing a scene of two more swans is among the highlights at an exhibition on the drawings and sketches of René Lalique (1860-1945).

It is the final months of the major exhibition of Marc Chagall (1887- 1985) works at Alon Zakaim, where visitors can expect to see lovers floating through the sky with the occasional goat in the tradition of many of the artist’s most recognisable works.

A couple of headline lots, a scattering of rare and unusual pictures and one of the most valuable consignments of prints ever offered lifted the latest series of Old Master auctions in London.