Oil, Acrylic paintings & Mixed Media

The highest price for any work of art sold at auction in France was set at Sotheby’s Paris this week when Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) ‘Iris’ was bid to €43m (£36.1m).

The largest group of works by Bettina Shaw-Lawrence (1921-2018) ever to have come to the open market will be offered at Cheffins later this month.

Two atmospheric but contrasting views of the capital drew interest at a recent London themed sale held at Olympia Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).

A large collection of pictures, furniture, antiques, silver and works of art amassed by the Italian fashion designer Gerolamo ‘Gimmo’ Etro emerged at Milan saleroom Il Ponte (35/28% buyer’s premium) last month.

The auction record for American painter Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-77) climbed higher last week after a small-scale depiction of shells drew a remarkable bidding battle at Freeman’s in New York.

Sotheby’s will offer JMW Turner’s (1775-1851) ‘Rome, from Mount Aventine’ in December, 12 years after the same picture set a £27m auction record in the same saleroom.

A previously unpublished painting, only recently discovered in an Austrian private collection, promises to be one of the high points at Dorotheum’s upcoming auction of Old Masters in Vienna.

Estimated at £400-600, an Old Master equestrian portrait drew fervent competition at a recent auction in Suffolk.

A painting believed to be the earliest known depiction of the game of ‘colf’ – a forerunner of golf played on frozen water in the Netherlands – has been bought jointly by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and The Mauritshuis in The Hague.

Offered with a £2000-3000 estimate, a Royal Academy exhibit by Algernon Newton (1880-1968) that came completely fresh to the market was always likely to well exceed its expected level.

An Old Master with a quirky but arresting subject drew hefty competition at Woolley & Wallis’ (27/26% buyer’s premium) latest picture sale.

An early portrait of a child by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) has come to auction in France, having never left the family of the sitter.

Christie’s will offer 62 works originally owned by the influential French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922) as part of its sales in Paris this autumn.

Over recent years, plenty of the commercially prized flower pictures by the artist-plantsman Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris (1889-1982) have made impressive sums in the saleroom. But what of his landscapes?