Fine Art

A new high for any work of art sold at auction came at Christie’s New York last night as Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ sold at $160m (£108.1m).

This Italian baroque bronze depicting ‘Ganymede and the Eagle’ by Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi (1656-1740) proved the highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s recent sale in Edinburgh.

US insurance firms Crystal & Co and AIG Private Client Group are working together to create a new product for owners of conceptual art.

Dorset auctioneers Cottees ventured into the Modern Art market with their latest sale featuring works by the likes of Paul Nash, Fred Yates and Lawrence Durrell.

A career criminal who stole more than £700,000 worth of Fabergé items and sold them to a crack dealer for just £100 has been jailed for 28 months.

Dulwich Picture Gallery launched a long overdue show of watercolours by Eric Ravilious (1903-42) last week, an artist unswayed by fashion whose paintings and designs encapsulate the spirit of inter-War England.

Two large 18th century gold medals depicting events from the reign of Catherine the Great sold for spectacular sums at Duke’s latest auction in Dorchester.

This portrait by Glyn Warren Philpot (1884-1937) was the star performer of pictures formerly in Sir Noël Coward’s collection sold at Christie’s South Kensington.

One of the most spectacular regional auction finds of the past decade returns to the limelight this week with the publication of a book documenting the history of a cache of early topographical photographs belonging to the Victorian critic, artist and social reformer John Ruskin (1819-1900).

“Most of us will never experience space, which explains why space-flown items are in such high demand. Their travels imbue them with an almost mystical aura.”

Old Master paintings rarely take centre stage over Modern, Impressionist or Contemporary art these days. Yet this most traditional of collecting disciplines remains the soul of TEFAF Maastricht, the umbilical cord to its genesis as the Pictura fair.

More information has emerged about the colourful recent history of the £5m Wolsey Angels.

The curators of the ‘Inventing Impressionism’ exhibition at the National Gallery are giving a talk at the second edition of ‘VIEW: A Festival of Art History’ at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni in South Kensington on Saturday, February 28, at 7pm.

The parties caught in a conundrum over proper title to two of the recently rediscovered Wolsey Angels have formed an extraordinary syndicate to resolve the issue.

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge have promised to reveal more evidence backing the attribution to Michelangelo of a pair of bronze figures of two nude males riding panthers.

Five works by Claude Monet helped Sotheby’s set a new high for a London auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art last night.

This version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) celebrated painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ sold for $4.5m (£3.1m) at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in New York yesterday. It was an oil sketch with quite a backstory.

The buyer of £25.5m worth of artworks left on a train in Italy faces a legal claim from the heir of the man from whom they were stolen in 1970.

A High Court judge has dismissed a claim made against Sotheby’s surrounding the sale of a disputed version of Caravaggio’s ‘The Card Sharps’.

As part of Old Master Week in New York, Sotheby’s will sell paintings assembled by J.E. Safra on January 29.