News

After Modern art specialist Francis Briest and Claude Aguttes of suburban Neuilly, Hervé Poulain and Rémy Le Fur have become the latest auctioneers to join Artcurial.

Paul Sumner, managing director of Sotheby’s Olympia, has resigned from the company and is returning to Australia where he plans to set up his own business.

In a second attempt to have his price-fixing conviction overturned, former Sotheby’s auction house chairman A. Alfred Taubman has asked an appeals court to reconsider his case, citing errors by the trial judge. “This was not a fair fight,” lawyers for the Bloomfield Hills multimillionaire said when filing the 95-page appeal document on May 21.

THE spectre of misleading fair guides landing dealers with bills for hundreds of pounds for unwanted advertising has risen yet again.

AN ex-Cambridge University student, jailed for four years for plundering priceless historical book collections, may face a stiffer sentence unless he repays hundreds of thousands of pounds.

THE WILD IRISH GIRL was the novel that made the name of Miss Sydney Owenson, the daughter of a Shrewsbury merchant and mayor who later married Sir Thomas Charles Morgan, surgeon to her Dublin patrons, the Marquess and Lady Abercorn. A self-proclaimed national tale, it weaves Irish history, politics and mythology into a romantic tale but the author’s vision of a politically and religiously united Ireland remains a dream.

A former chief executive of Vernon’s Pools hit the jackpot at Vectis (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 8-9, when the specialist toy auctioneers dispersed just over 2000 lots of his Dinky and Corgi vehicles at their Buckingham salerooms for a total of £350,000.