News

Sensible estimates coupled with lots of good -quality material were the key to success at Ross’s (12.5% buyer’s premium) in Belfast on March 5. The 252-lot catalogue, from which 90 per cent of pictures were sold by value, taking a hammer total of £350,000, had something to suit all pockets and auctioneer Daniel Clarke felt it to be the sort of sale in which it would have been “impossible not to have found something you like”.

CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown’s Budget plans to help achieve one of the three main aims of the National Art Collections Fund (the Art Fund) campaign to improve art donation. Concern that art owners do not have enough incentive to bequeath works to the nation has led the Chancellor to announce that he will look at introducing a policy of tax relief on such donations – until now, such relief has only been available on donations of cash or shares.

A JUNE 3 New York court hearing will rule whether Sotheby’s and Christie’s should pay $40m compensation to clients who bought and sold at their auctions outside the US during the 1990s.

THE British Antiques and Collectables Awards have come round again, with judges from across the trade and auctioneering profession singling out the cream of their colleagues for praise.

For a Scottish antique, no provenance is more guaranteed to stir the blood than a connection, however tenuous, with a romantic outlaw. At Lyon & Turnbull’s sale on 26 March the link was Rob Roy McGregor, or at least the cattle rustler’s loyal kinsman and Glasgow magistrate Baillie Nicol Jarvie.

Looking after Antiques by Frances Halahan and Anna Plowden, published by National Trust Enterprises Ltd. ISBN 0707802865 £35hb

BUSY Norfolk organiser Liz Allport-Lomax has been quite quiet of late, having cancelled her February fixture at Norwich due to problematic parking. But Lomax Antiques Fairs are now back on the road with their first fair of the year, the third annual North Norfolk Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Sussex Barn, Burnham Market over the Easter weekend from April 19 to 21.