Auctioneers

One of the earliest pieces of ancient art in the US, an ancient Assyrian relief that arrived in Virginia before the American Civil War, is being offered at auction.

A book of specimen banknotes printed for locations across the world has set a house record for Tring Market Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium) by selling for £205,000.

Accounts of wars and skirmishes in the southern states of North America and Mexico were one notable feature of an August 23 sale held in San Francisco.

It was of early manufacture, looked beautiful and the condition was very good – but auctioneer Ben Rogers Jones admits to still being mystified as to why a paperweight sold for such a hefty price at his Cardiff saleroom.

With buying opportunities proliferating across the US this autumn, ATG picks out a selection of highlights appearing at auctions from Boston to California.

Wintry scenes by two local artists created a brighter picture at a recent auction in Yorkshire.

Among the most iconic works of David Hockney’s (b.1937) output was his Paper Pools series, focusing on the private Californian swimming pools he experienced in the late 1970s.

A scarce Meissen figure, but no stranger to these pages in recent months (see ATG No 2349), Count Bruhl’s Tailor rode his goat to more success at Gildings (15% buyer’s premium) on September 4.

Auction house Lyon & Turnbull hails the encouraging return of American interest at its September 5 sale.

An album of 40 albumen images by pioneering photographer John Thomson with direct appeal to the market for early depictions of the Orient was the outstanding star at Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Described by one of his biographers as ‘The Last of the Norwich School’, Leonard Squirrell (1893-1979) was an East Anglian man through and through.

A view of a Tyneside street by Spennymoor mining artist Norman Cornish (1919-2014) took £5500 at local auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

Following more than a century of art market activity, opportunities now abound to buy traditional European art and antiques in the US