Auctioneers

Banksy’s derisive portrayal of The House of Commons reduced to an assembly of primates achieved a record £8.5m (plus premium) in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction on October 3.

A missing Pugin parliamentary letter box has been returned to the Palace of Westminster more than 100 years after it disappeared.

Since 1984, only about 20 paintings by the Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910) have come on the auction market and many of his best-known works are in international museums.

Chief marketing officer Marc Sands outlines his plans for online growth at the auction house.

For a number of years, the Colchester-born artist Harry Becker (1865-1928) followed the conventional path of a professional artist, achieving significant success and exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy. But a growing disenchantment with London led to his ultimate departure in 1913 to Suffolk.

Original paintings by Abstract artist Nicolas de Stael (1914-55) rarely appear at auction outside the main salerooms in London, Paris and New York.

Pitched at £200-300, this Russian diptych icon shown below triggered wide pre-sale Russian and East European interest ahead of Elstob & Elstob’s 20% buyer’s premium) sale at Bedale.

This Resolution and Adventure medal is one of 2000 that were commissioned by the British Admiralty ahead of James Cook’s Second Voyage.

Artist famous for his busy panoramic scenes also profited from intimate female portraits

The most famous book from the first years of printing using moveable type is the Bible produced by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz in the mid-1450s, but in Hamburg on November 25 Ketterer Kunst will be offering another very rare and early Bible.

The catalogue description correctly read ‘Art Nouveau silver powder bowl by Gilbert Marks, hallmark London 1900, weight approx 8.79oz, 273.4gms, decorated with stylised thistles repousse’.

In a sale of Modern and Contemporary British art in south London, this undated work House and Trees below sold for a multi-estimate £5800.

In a move to increase its digital presence and reach new bidders, Bonhams has agreed a long- term partnership with Auction Technology Group, owner of online auction marketplace thesaleroom.com.

A fine private collection amassed in the 1960s provided the base for the inaugural Russian Coins & Historical Medals sale held by Dix Noonan Webb (24% buyer’s premium).

Many figures involved in the booming 19th century art industry of livestock portraiture had no formal training.

Shown below are the frontispiece and title-page of Newes from the East-Indies..., a 1638 account by William Bruton of his travels in ‘Bengalla’.

Several records were broken when all 442 lots in the Glynn & Suzanne Crain science-fiction collection sold in a US auction on August 13-14.

The first printed copy of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica was published in Strasbourg as early as c.1475 with subsequent versions printed in Vienna (1513), Strasbourg again (1500), Haguenau (1506), Paris (1544) and Antwerp (1550).

Punching well above its weight, a 9ct gold Lonsdale Championship boxing trophy presented to legendary Glaswegian champion Benny Lynch was the top draw at Fellows’ (23% buyer’s premium) sale in Birmingham.

At the budget-price end of the Chinese boom – which tends to get overlooked – profits are there for the keen eyed, such as the vendor of this twin-handled censer shown here.