Fine Art

Personal effects of Sir Winston Churchill, including the morocco dispatch box pictured here, were among the highlights of Sotheby’s highly publicised estate sale of his youngest child, the late Mary Soames.

More than half the receipts from Christie’s inaugural Exceptional sale in New York came from a single lot. And it was one with quite a history.

One of the best-loved of all of E.H. Shepard’s illustrations to the famous A.A. Milne books has set a saleroom record after selling for £260,000.

The outstanding lot of the latest Old Master auction series in London, ‘Rome, from Mount Aventine’ by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), was knocked down at £27m at Sotheby’s evening sale, setting a record price for the artist.

A project to create a free, comprehensive photo catalogue online of all the sculptures held in UK public collections has moved a step closer thanks to a £2.84m pledge of support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Arguably the most famous historic figure in French history and a princely provenance proved an irresistible combination earlier this month in France when a collection of Napoleonic memorabilia formed by the Grimaldi dynasty of Monaco went under the hammer.

New York has witnessed some spectacular auction prices of late and another came last week as ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1’ by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was knocked down at $39.5m (£26.3m) at Sotheby’s American art sale.

Bonhams will their launch their sales of Modern and Contemporary Art from Asia in Hong Kong on March 15 during the ‘Art Basel Hong Kong’ week.

Christie’s latest evening sale of Contemporary art in New York posted a premium-inclusive total of $852.9m (£557.4m), a new record for any auction.

Piasa are not the only Paris étude to have moved to new premises this autumn. Cornette de Saint Cyr have now opened their new saleroom in a 19th century hôtel particulier on the avenue Hoche near the Parc Monceau.

Works by Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigliani were the highlights of the latest series of Impressionist & Modern art series in New York.

The opening salvos have been fired in the court case centred on the version of Caravaggio’s ‘The Card Sharps’ which sold at Sotheby’s in 2006.

Bonhams will offer an archive of over 350 unpublished images by the Victorian amateur photographer Emma Francis Johnston.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford has bought the personal archive of William Henry Fox Talbot, the British ‘founder of photography’, after a successful appeal.

The Contemporary art auctions staged during London’s Frieze week showed no signs of letting up as the bidding took little account of the stockmarkets that were nosediving at the same time.

This Fabergé enamelled silver and hardstone cigarette box sold for £46,500 at the latest sale held at Nicholas Mellors of Newark.

Paintings and objects from the estate of the late Mary Soames, the youngest daughter of Sir Winston Churchill, are to be sold at Sotheby’s in London.

This huge installation created using more than 40 gallons of oil paints will be the centrepiece of the first exhibition to mark the launch of shows by visiting artists to The Garden Rooms at Tennants.

The name Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was mentioned as the possible hand responsible for this unsigned 18th century French charcoal and chalk drawing that leapt from lowly expectations to sell for £320,000 (plus 22.5% buyer’s premium) at Toovey’s of Washington, West Sussex on October 8.

When Ann Ullmann, the daughter of Eric Ravilious (1903-42), visited J.S. Auctions’ newly refurbished salerooms in Banbury in August, she declared herself delighted to see this previously unknown 16 x 20in (41 x 52cm) watercolour, above, by her father for the first time.