Old Masters

A rare oil sketch by Peter Paul Rubens created for an important commission in Antwerp has been discovered in a house in northern France and will come up for auction in Lille on March 31.

A total of 18 phones competed for a rare devotional painting offered by a New York institution at Freeman’s in Philadelphia this week.

A marketing drive has begun for the sale of a painting touted as the ‘Toulouse Caravaggio (1571-1610)’. The picture was unveiled in London today ahead of its auction in France in June.

Three major Old Master acquisitions by museums have been announced over the last fortnight. They include two works that headlined London’s latest auction series in this category.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest has announced that it bought the Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) portrait of Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I, that sold for £5m at Christie’s in December.

The Louvre museum in Paris has requested the loan of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ for its major exhibition dedicated to the artist opening in October.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi has been revealed as the buyer of the small Rembrandt oil painting that led Sotheby’s Old Master evening sale in London at the end of last year after it went on view at the museum in the United Arab Emirates.

The City of Leicester Museums Trust is hoping to raise £565,000 to keep a William Hogarth painting on the walls of a local gallery.

London gallery Richard Green has said it will defend a claim made in the High Court by a client who purchased two Old Masters for €5m at TEFAF Maastricht last year.

Prof David Starkey has said the most successful art dealers, such as his friend Philip Mould, do not necessarily have the greatest knowledge of art history but rather possess 'a flair for discoveries'.

A New York institution has consigned an intriguing Netherlandish devotional painting to Freeman’s sale in Philadelphia on February 27.

A life-sized portrait by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) set a record for any female Old Master when it was knocked down at $6.1m (£4.67m) at Sotheby’s New York last night.

A sketch by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) that formerly belonged to the Dutch King William II and his wife Anna Pavlovna has set an auction record for a drawing by the artist at Sotheby’s New York.