Fine Art

Two finely carved marble figures of mourners from the tomb of Jean de France, the duc de Berry (1340-1416) brother of King Charles V of France were secured by the Louvre for €4.4m (£3.67m) at Christie’s Paris last week.

A rediscovered Augustus John (1878-1961) pencil drawing of his friend Jacob Epstein sold for £80,000 at Mellors & Kirk in Nottingham.

An 1885 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) oil, ‘hidden in plain sight’ for decades, carries an estimate of $800,000-$1.2m at Litchfield County Auctions’ June 29-30 sale in the US.

In a difficult evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s, Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) portrait of Madame Hanka Zborowska was one of few highpoints.

Haynes Fine Art, established in the Cotswolds in 1971, will open a satellite London gallery on Pimlico Road later this month.

It was a pretty short sale. Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art auction last night offered just 27 lots and took less than 90 minutes to complete.

Sotheby’s will start dedicated sales of Modern and Contemporary African Art in London next year. The decision underlines the growing importance of a sector in which Bonhams have stolen a march in recent years.

A painting catalogued as from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens soared past a cautious four-figure estimate to take €1.56m (£1.3m) at a recent Paris auction.

A private collection of Scottish Colourist paintings assembled by a former president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh gave a major boost to Lyon & Turnbull’s latest specialist auction of Scottish Paintings & Sculpture.

Sacha Llewellyn is a co-founder of Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, which specialises in reappraising under-represented artists of the past.

Three works by LS Lowry (1887-1976) formerly owned by the late Cilla Black sold for almost £700,000 (including premium) at Sotheby’s yesterday.

Contemporary art dealer David Zwirner has announced plans to open a fourth gallery in Hong Kong in 2017.

Alex Rotter has been appointed as the new chairman of Post War and Contemporary art, Christie’s Americas, having left Sotheby’s after 16 years in March.

The small loan exhibition ‘The Peculiarity of Algernon Newton (1880-1968)’ by dealer Daniel Katz in 2012 helped put on the map a British painter who went largely unrecognised during his lifetime.

The David Zwirner Gallery has been appointed worldwide representative for selling works from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, after a competitive, open competition between four galleries.

New books and works on paper specialists Forum Auctions will hold their first London sale at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair on July 13-14.

Christie’s have announced that a major landscape by John Constable will be among the works on offer at their Defining British Art sale in London this summer.

Royal Museums Greenwich are attempting to raise £10m to buy a version of The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I. The work currently belongs to descendants of Sir Francis Drake but the institution say that unless the required funds are raised, the painting “could be sold on the open market and even go overseas”.

Although its launch was only announced in February, the ‘Modern Art Fair’ planned for September in London has been postponed, but will run in 2017.

Eric Bijzet has become the latest expert to leave Sotheby’s as he plans to set up on his own as a dealer back home in Amsterdam.