Bonhams

Provenance proved the key component for two paintings that achieved multi-estimate sums at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) in London.

Private Collections, an October 3 sale at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium), offered works of art from a number of sources and among lots from the estate of the late Victor, 3rd Viscount Churchill – a cousin of Winston – there were a few books.

The first book printed and published in Antarctica was 'Aurora Australis', a work produced during the 1908-09 Nimrod expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.

Gerard Sekoto (1913-93) is cementing his place as one of the most bankable names in the field of South African art.

One of the earliest surviving incandescent light bulbs, made by the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) in the 1870s, sold for £7500 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Bonhams’ sale titled Instruments of Science and Technology.

Two early examples of Indo- Portuguese furniture sold for five-figure sums at auction this month.

Bonhams’ September 25 Exploration and Travel sale in New York opens with the 80-lot Joe Fitzsimmons library devoted to works on Antarctic Exploration.

A painting by the Victorian Neo-classicist painter John Godward (1861-1922) not seen on the market since 1925 is going under the hammer at Bonhams in New Bond Street on September 26.

Real rarities and record breakers are among items that feature in this first of a couple of reviews of more literary lots from the wealth of summer sales. Here the focus is principally on works of the last 200 years or so – and includes such diverse characters as Hugh the Heron and the Invisible Man.

Bonhams’ chairman Robert Brooks is retiring from the auction house after selling the company to private equity group Epiris.

UK dealers buying foreign silver, overseas bidders taking British work and generally solid interest for traditional pieces of mid-ranking silver brightened up the normally quieter late summer sales across the country.

An unpublished letter written by Nelson Mandela from his prison cell on Robben Island is to be offered at Bonhams’ South African sale in New Bond Street on September 14.