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Two Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) gouache watercolours painted during her artistic prime were taken to multi-estimate sums at separate UK salerooms in the same week.

Every year Paris plays host to a December Asian art auction series with a raft of sales at the Drouot auction centre and at the independent rooms across the French capital.

Putting classic English furniture firmly back in the forefront of provincial sales in the first part of December was this Chippendale-design Gainsborough library armchair offered in Winchester by Andrew Smith (21% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from January 7-18, 2020.

International interest at the Kingham & Orme (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Evesham on December 6-7 focused on René Lalique. A single-owner collection of the great French designer’s work attracted multiple phone and internet bidders from the US, the Continent and Russia.

Rarely seen in public before, this signed 18in x 2ft (45 x 65cm) gouache is one of the earliest works by the British Modernist painter John Armstrong (1893-1973).

Provincial by geography but far from provincial in outlook, auction houses from Essex to the Yorkshire Dales underlined the international nature of their trade at recent auctions. Cosmopolitanism covered both what was on offer and who was buying.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a William Henry Hunt self-portrait.

A bid of £5000 from a Contemporary art gallery in London secured this post-war portrait by the writer and Vorticist painter Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

This 12in (30cm) cong form vase with elephant-head handles is decorated in qianjiangcai enamels by Cheng Men (1833-1908) – one of the best known of the late Qing period porcelain painters.