Fine Art

For Master Drawings New York this year, London dealer Martyn Gregory is focusing on one female artist and her output during her extensive (and, for the time, very intrepid) travels around the world.

An auction series devoted to Old Master paintings, drawings and works of art has long been a feature of the first month of the year in New York for Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

Paintings by lesser-known Pre-Raphaelites took the honours at the latest Victorian art sales held at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9%) and Christie’s (25/20/12.5%).

One outcome of Master Drawings New York’s expansion to take in paintings and sculpture as well as works on paper is the inclusion this year of Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, specialist in sculpture and works of art.

Among the works that David Tunick, a longstanding MDNY exhibitor, will be showing this year at his gallery on East 69th Street is this large 18 x 14in (45.5 x 35.5 cm) watercolour over pencil by John Robert Cozens.

For the Fine Art Society in Edinburgh, the year kicks off with an exhibition of 20th century printmaking.

An extensive collection with Astor family provenance offered at auction was billed as best of its type in more than 20 years.

Sotheby’s sale of 80 pieces of memorabilia relating to Lord Horatio Nelson featured a return to the saleroom of many lots acquired by the ‘Princely’ vendor in 2005.

Jill Newhouse, a New York dealer with a gallery on East 81st Street, is a veteran of Master Drawings New York, having taken part for many years.

London is to host a viewing of a small oil painting by Paul Cézanne ahead of its sale in the US.

Donations to museums via inheritance tax schemes grew 22% in the past year, according to the latest Arts Council annual report.

Used as the catalogue cover design for an Illustration Art sale held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of New York was the George Lepape watercolour, ‘Après la Tempeste’ shown below.

A retrospective of William Tillyer (b.1938) running at Bernard Jacobson this month is only the first in a series of events planned relating to the British artist at the Duke Street gallery this year.

The picture dealer element of BRAFA is substantial, but increasingly these days the emphasis is on works from the 19th century onwards, be they Impressionist and modern or post-war and contemporary art.

He was among the most prolific and longest serving official war artists of the Second World War, yet Anthony Gross (1905-84) remains an obscure name among 20th century British talents.

More than £730,000 worth of pictures changed hands at Edinburgh saleroom Lyon & Turnbull’s (25/20% buyer’s premium) recent sale of Scottish art.