Fine Art

THE question of authenticity remains high on the agenda in the Banksy market after a last-minute intervention by the self-styled guerrilla artist had a devastating effect on Lyon & Turnbull’s latest attempt to break into the London contemporary art market.

MEDIA interest in the Pietro Psaier controversy saw members of the national press in attendance at John Nicholson’s Fernhurst rooms on September 24 for the sale of 235 artworks.

As experienced art dealers discussed the £95.6m sale of 233 new works by Damien Hirst (b.1965), it was the word 'celebrity' that cropped up the most to explain the phenomenal prices seen at the Beautiful Inside my Head Forever sale.

The British Library has secured the oldest surviving roll of arms in English history after a successful fundraising effort to keep it in the UK. The Dering Roll dates from the last quarter of the 13th century and depicts 324 coats of arms, approximately a quarter of the English baronage during the time of Edward I, making it a vital record for the study of heraldry in medieval England.

STREET art by Banksy – until now a problem area at auction because of authentication – is about to be brought in from the cold thanks to a new independent verification body.

The largest ever retrospective exhibition of the work of popular Modern British painter Edward Seago (1910-1974) will be held from September 8-19 at the Bond Street dealers Colnaghi, who represented the artist in his heyday.

SOTHEBY’S dependence on the contemporary art market could hardly be clearer than in their latest set of figures.

WHAT is billed as London's largest sculpture gallery will be launched on October 1 when Pangolin London opens in a 100 sq metre space at the new Kings Place development near King's Cross and St. Pancras International stations.

A MAJOR loan exhibition of early works by Lucian Freud (b.1922) will run from October 9 to December 12 at the St James’s gallery of Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, 38 Bury Street, London SW1.

TO the connoisseurial mind, it was not the paintings that lit up the Old Master series in London in early July but rather three rediscovered drawings by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) offered in a dedicated Old Master and 19th century works on paper sale at Christie’s on July 8.

The final chapter in the story of ‘The Colin Wilson Monkeys’ ended quietly on July 30 when they sold at auction for an unspectacular £25,000.

SOME 13 telephone bidders made their presence felt at a recent sale at Lawrences in Crewkerne, Somerset, as they turned out to compete for seven iconic 20th century prints by artists from the Grosvenor School of Art.

GALERIE Kugel in Paris are to hold an exhibition of the Prince of Liechtenstein’s collection of bronzes from September 10 to November 7.

A rediscovered painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was the toast of the Old Master auction series in London last week. Missing for almost 200 years and presumed to have been destroyed, La Surprise was offered at Christie’s evening sale on July 8.

LONDON’S latest contemporary art sales saw vast sums of money continuing to be channelled into top-end post-War art as prices and confidence in the market remained high.

If Bonhams' July 2 sale of 20th century British art is anything to go by, demand for the humorous art of Beryl Cook (1926-2008) has strengthened since she died in May.

London’s flagship June Impressionist and Modern sales saw Christie’s and Sotheby’s notch up a premium-inclusive total of £298m between them in three days.

A TRIPLE portrait of three Elizabethan girls that sold for £620,000 at Christie’s sale of the Simon Sainsbury Collection has now been identified as a picture of the Egerton sisters from c.1601-2.