Sotheby's

It’s late August and the art market continues its summer slumber.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Almost 30 years ago, a proof copy of Clare Leighton’s 'The Farmer’s Year of 1933', effectively a cased set of 12 of her wood engravings, all captioned, signed and inscribed in her hand, sold for £2800 at Sotheby’s.

The art market is “neither frothy nor depressed”, according to Sotheby’s chief executive Tad Smith.

For many years auctioneers have been itching to move the finest arms and armour from the province of the specialist collector and establish them with a wider audience as works of art in their own right.

Works by the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers continued to outperform the rest of the Victorian art market during the latest round of sales in London.

An extraordinarily rich and varied crop of book sales have taken place this summer.

A superb set of decorated armour sold at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) is believed to have set a record. The £880,000 hammer price for the three-quarter-length cuirassier protection is believed to be the highest auction result for 17th century armour.

A superb suite of the original ink and gouache drawings – one shown here – made by Carl Otto Czeschka to illustrate a 1908 edition of Die Niebelungen dem Deutschen Volke sold at $290,000 (£224,805) in a Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of June 6 called Important Design.

A record-breaking Canaletto (1697-1768) drawing was the toast of the capital’s Old Masters drawings sales.

Written off by some as a dying area, the latest Old Master series in London defied the naysayers with encouraging results during its traditional ‘grand finale’ slot at the end of the London sales season.

A number of the French auction rooms have released their sales figures for the first half of the year, with Christie’s Paris operation taking the top slot.