Christie's

The collection of medals awarded to Ernest Shackleton, the most decorated of the Polar explorers, excelled at a recent Christie’s South Kensington sale.

Simon de Pury’s sale of the Lambert collection, trailed as a litmus test for high-end digital auctions, will now be conducted as a bricks and mortar event from the rostrum at King Street.

Christie’s have announced a major highlight for the upcoming New York auction series. They are offering Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude) which they have estimated at in excess of $100m.

The UK government has placed a temporary export bar on the earliest known on-the-spot depiction of Niagara Falls which sold at Christie’s South Kensington earlier this year.

Guillaume Cerutti, chief executive of Sotheby’s France and European deputy chairman, is to leave and join Christie’s as president for London, Continental Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India.

This striking 2ft 1½in (64.4cm) high Luba figural bowstand made c.1880 by the Warua Master was the runaway star of London’s high season sales.

A stolen Auguste Rodin sculpture, recovered after it was consigned to Christie’s in 2011, will go to auction later this year.

A rare painting by Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) that had hung in the Prime Minister’s residence at 10, Downing Street for nine years led Christie’s evening sale of Old Master & British paintings in London.

The latest series of Contemporary art auctions in London posted a bumper total despite the failure of some big-ticket lots.

A group of restituted paintings were among the highlights of a robust series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in London.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s have well-established specialist departments for brokering deals on sale of Nazi-looted works returned to rightful heirs. Over the last decade some major pieces of Impressionist and Modern art have come to auction as a result of restitution settlements.

Christie’s has agreed to withdraw seven pictures, including two by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, from its July 9 and 10 sales after owners the Alfred Beit Foundation asked to postpone their sale.

The latest Modern and Contemporary art auctions in New York took the market to new heights with $2.73bn (£1.84bn) changing hands over two weeks of flagship sales.

Christie’s evening sale of post-war and Contemporary art last night posted a premium-inclusive total of $658.5m (£445m) as the bumper fortnight of auctions continued in New York.

A new high for any work of art sold at auction came at Christie’s New York last night as Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ sold at $160m (£108.1m).

The writing desk and chair used by Charles Dickens as he penned a number of his later classics have been bought by a museum based at the author’s former central London home.

Four lots were withdrawn at the eleventh hour by Christie’s last week amid fresh allegations in the media over illicit antiquities at auction.

A career criminal who stole more than £700,000 worth of Fabergé items and sold them to a crack dealer for just £100 has been jailed for 28 months.

It has the highest-ever estimate placed on a work of art at auction. Predicted to fetch ‘in the region of $140m’, Christie’s are offering Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ in New York on May 11.

COMMENT: One is a marketing expert from outside the industry with a background in the media, luxury and entertainment sectors, the other is a career auction house professional with decades of service at the same company under his belt.