Fine Art

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.

A SNATCHED moment frozen in time thanks to the lucky presence of a camera... or was it?

Bird in Space, right, an unrecorded marble version of one of Constantin Brancusi’s most celebrated and iconic subjects, was the toast of Christie’s $126.8m Impressionist and Modern art sale last week in New York.

THE piece with star billing at Bonhams’ April 21 Antiquities auction was the dramatic white marble group, shown here, even meriting its own separate hardback catalogue.

THE market for the paintings of Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) continues to be on a roll, particularly up in Cumbria, where the former wife of Ben Nicholson lived in the town of Brampton, some 10 miles east of Carlisle, during the latter stages of her career after her return from Paris in 1938.

Lays, Penzance, March 17-18. Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent A BRONZE statue, Vanity by Sir William Hamo Thornycroft R.A. (1850-1925), was the most sought-after entry at this Cornish outing.

In November 1933, the Queen Mother (then Duchess of York) wrote to Charles Edmund Brock (1870-1938), a noted illustrator and society painter, commissioning a family portrait.

IT was a matter of success breeding success for Oxfordshire auctioneers Holloway’s in March. Late last year they sold an 18th century ivory bust, possibly of Handel, for £29,000, and when the owner of a tiny medieval ivory panel read of it in ATG No 1671, January 8, he decided to offer it in the Banbury rooms.

PICK up the Modern British reference books and you might just find a small mention of Edgar Hubert: born in Billingshurst, West Sussex in 1906; trained at the Slade; an exhibitor with the London Group from 1931 to 1947; died in obscurity (actually it was in Scafold, West Sussex) in 1985.

TRADITIONAL British pictures have not been one of the strongest areas of the art market in the last couple of years, with sporting paintings being particularly stuck in the doldrums.

Maryland auction house Hantman’s will sell personal artefacts and archival material relating to Pierre August Renoir at auction on May 14.

The former collection of Dmitri Snegaroff (1885-1959) was the focus of attention at the Modern and Contemporary art sale at ArtCurial (20.93% buyer’s premium) on February 22-23.

It is not every day a dealer refuses to sell a piece of stock, but that was very much the case with the work shown here, which was the highlight of Sotheby’s Bond Street's (20/12% buyer's premium) sale of the Adler collection last month.

GORRINGES were celebrating a house record last Thursday following the sale of a rediscovered late work by John William Godward (1858-1922) for £440,000.