Fine Art

A cache of William Blake watercolours, unearthed in a Glasgow bookshop five years ago, are to be sold in New York after attempts to keep them together in the United Kingdom have failed.

This medieval bronze jug was the talking point of Sotheby’s sale of the contents of Easton Neston last year when it was bought by London dealer Daniel Katz for a premium-inclusive £568,000 against expectations of £60,00-80,000. The rare jug is cast with a slew of insignia including the Royal arms as used between 1340 and 1405, a maker’s mark and the inscription To My Lord Wenlok.

The highlight of a strong £500,000 sale conducted by Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet on February 14 was this Fabergé silver-gilt and cloisonné enamel box. It had been given to the vendor's husband by his grandfather who had lived and worked in St Petersburg until the time of the Revolution and had met Carl Fabergé in person.

New buyers help records tumble as London reinforces its importance

THE Art Loss Register has announced the recovery of four valuable paintings stolen 27 years ago in a £30m theft.

The Victoria & Albert Museum’s sculpture collection will be redisplayed this spring in the new Dorothy and Michael Hintze Galleries.

Establishing a new landmark for a picture lot sold at auction outside London, two portraits by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) took £900,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory salerooms last week.

On a cold January 26 night in Edinburgh, a packed saleroom at Lyon & Turnbull witnessed a defining moment in the Scottish art market.

Christie’s will test the potentially lucrative waters of the Middle Eastern market in situ by holding an inaugural sale in Dubai this spring.

ST James’s gallery Frost and Reed, founded in 1808, have undergone a management shake-up and will have an increased focus on Contemporary art.

Christie’s return higher total for a single sale, but Sotheby’s secure top price of series

INTERNATIONAL exhibition and publishing company dmg world media have acquired Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc., producers of SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York.

Dreweatt Neate Fine Art have arranged a major private treaty sale to the National Library of Australia, on behalf of a prominent UK family, of a historically important folio of watercolours.

When Alex Butcher’s eye was drawn to this painting, right, he did not realise that part of the attraction might have been its familiarity.

Long before J.R.R. Tolkien settled down to write The Hobbit, he had acquired a postcard reproduction of the ink, watercolour and gouache painting Der Berggeist (The Mountain Spirit).

DOUBTLESS unique, but in its way typical of the sort of success enjoyed at Robert Finan’s sale, was this Russian 18th century emerald, ruby and diamond cross, right, mounted in silver and gold.

LIKE so much material where the name is so much part of the game, the exquisite objets d’art fashioned in the Russian workshops of Carl Fabergé have attracted copyists, repro-producers and outright forgers.

English folk art with an American accent. Not only did the pair of child portraits seen at the Athenaeum in Bury St Edmunds on June 15 represent charming examples of early 19th century folk art, they also carried the name of an artist who would move to America shortly after they were painted.

London turned up the heat in the market for Contemporary art when both Sotheby’s and Christie’s achieved outstanding results at their June evening sales.

The rainbow plate seen above right comes from an 1814 first issue* of David Cox’s Treatise on landscape Painting and Effect in Watercolours, an oblong folio work that incorporates a hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece and 31 plates (15 coloured, 15 in sepia) as well as 24 soft ground etchings.