Auctions

Early maps and charts, previously owned by a Brazilian banker convicted of money laundering, surfaced for sale at Chiswick Auctions last week.

An oil on copper painting depicting Saint Joseph by the Bolognese artist Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802) was the highlight of Brightwells’ spring fine art sale in Leominster on March 21-22.

Henry Wynne (fl.1654-1709), master of the Clockmaker’s Company, produced the finest and largest double-horizontal sundials of the Restoration period.

A rediscovered neoclassical painting by Charles Meynier somersaulted nine times over its estimate to sell for €1.8m (£1.57m) at a sale in Nantes.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period March 22-28, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Two views on the big questions facing the trade… This week we ask whether promoting the foundation date of an auction house benefits the business' branding.

Selling just short of the auction record, this 10in (26cm) tall stoneware pot, below, by John Ward (b.1938) went to an online bidder on thesaleroom.com at £17,500 at Rogers Jones (20% buyer’s premium) in Cardiff.

Given current market conditions, watercolours can often be ‘the poor relation’ when it comes to mixed category picture sales. But examples benefitting from fine condition, colouring or execution, or a combination of these key factors, can lead to a very different outcome.

Synonymous with luxury and style, the Normandie epitomised the Art Deco era.

One says Scottish rather than Scotch except when one is referring to the spirit – or indeed, motor spirit as evident at the Edinburgh rooms of Thomson Roddick Scottish Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Three more modestly valued works drawing attention at Woolley & Wallis

Domenico Tintoretto (1560-1635), trained in Venice in the workshop of his renowned father, Jacopo.

Successful lots in a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 9 auction included, at $85,000 (£61,595), a letter that Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on the very day in September 1945 that the Second World War officially ended.

When the first wave of Kenner Star Wars action figures began arriving on the market in 1978, the Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker figures came with ‘double telescoping’ light sabres.

With species extermination very much in the news following the death of the world’s last male northern white rhino, there was added poignancy to a cased and stuff bird offered at Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).

Only a few examples of the rare four-part British quad poster for the 1965 James Bond movie 'Thunderball' exist in uncut form.

A painting of Farnham High Street from 1794 by a little-known artist fetched a not-so-little £8500 at Woolley & Wallis.