Auctions

A Victoria Cross group awarded to a British soldier who volunteered to carry a vital message to a stranded platoon at Mericourt in October 1918, in the knowledge that five of his comrades had already been in killed in turn making earlier attempts, sold for £200,000.

A work thought to be one of Thomas Gainsborough’s (1727-88) earliest attempts at oil painting as well as his earliest-known self-portrait was one of a number of lots drawing considerable attention at Cheffins.

A bronze sculpture of an ostrich catalogued as from the workshop of Mannerist sculptor Giambologna drew an extraordinary competition in Cambridge.

Another white-glove group of items featured at Parker Fine Art earlier this year when all 300 picture frame lots sold in its first sale of 2021, raising a hammer total of £38,400.

In 1918 in Florence the Italian artist Alberto Magnelli (1888-1971) produced a series of paintings, Explosions Lyriques, exploring the conflict between Abstraction and Figuration.

Armorial head linked to the palaces of Henry VIII when he was married to Anne Boleyn.

Paris auction hub best-sellers from March range across variety of collecting fields and eras.

South London auction house Roseberys (25% buyer’s premium) was instructed to sell the collection of Herbert Kennard on March 26.

A Constable-esque landscape turned a few heads at Chorley’s (22.5% buyer’s premium) latest fine art and antiques sale.

The book section of a twice postponed Gloucestershire sale – one that included the rare white Chelsea owl featured on the front page of ATG No 2486 – comprised books from the library at Spetchley Park in the neighbouring county of Worcestershire.

The familiar red-lettered, yellow-cloth covers of an 1897 first of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though now somewhat soiled, prompted a far higher than predicted bid of $21,000 (£15,150) to lead a Chicago auction of March 19 – a sum bettered only by a handful of inscribed copies.

Not to be confused with the modern Peter Rabbit series by Wedgwood, much scarcer teawares were made by the Grimwade’s factory in the 1920s.

Original photographs of a well-known Pre-Raphaelite beauty – the muse of William Holman Hunt and the mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell – sold for £2600 at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium).

Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt was one of the stand-out lots in a 300-lot white-glove auction.

ATG’s pick of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com, including both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Estimated at just £100-200, a rare automaton of a stereotypical Chinaman smoking an opium pipe sold for £7400 at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium).

Ground level views of Ceylon offered in same sale as uplifting account of balloon voyages.