News

This rare Elizabethan oak draw leaf refectory table proved to be the chief atttraction at the sale of the late Clive Sherwood’s Collection offered by Sotheby’s Olympia (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on May 22, when it sold for a mid-estimate £55,000 to a London dealer.

La Guérison de l’Epiléptique, 3ft x 2ft 4in (91 x 70cm), pictured right, by André Bauchand (c.1927), based on Raphael’s Transfiguration, sold on low-estimate for €3800 (£2450) at Blanchet (17.94% buyer’s premium) on May 15, partly reflecting the indifferent condition of its paintwork.

JOINING the illustrious roster of exhibitors at this month’s Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair, which runs at Mayfair’s Grosvenor House Hotel from June 12 to 18, is the distinguished arms and armour dealer Peter Finer.

This portrait miniature of a 30-year-old lady by Nicholas Hilliard, dated 1582, set a new auction record for the artist at Sotheby’s Olympia rooms on June 6 when it sold to a private collector bidding on the phone against the room for £200,000 (plus premium).

THE National Library of Ireland has acquired a sprawling collection of manuscripts by James Joyce, which remained hidden for nearly 60 years after being concealed from the Nazis.They include a total of some 700 pages in six notebooks, 16 drafts from Ulysses and typescripts and proofs of Finnegans Wake.

THE head of one of the United States’ biggest industrial conglomerates has quit the company after being indicted on charges of sales tax evasion on paintings valued at $13m.

VALUE investor Jack Petchey has taken just under a 20 per cent stake in Mayfair dealers Mallett. He acquired the 2.66m shares, representing a 19.28 per cent stake in the company, at a price of £2.10 a share, from Merrill Lynch, on May 30.