Events and conferences

BACK in London, Chris Beetles of Ryder Street in St James’s has just opened his amusing annual show of cat pictures, which, as always, features an important group of works by the world’s most famous exponent of the genre, Louis Wain (1860-1939).

UNDER the name Art Nouveau Originals, specialist dealer Cathy Turner is a very well-known figure on the fairs circuit, but she will now be even better known since she has just purchased The Bindery Gallery at 69 High Street, Broadway, Worcestershire (Tel: 01386 854645).

KNOWN for her stock of top-quality, early furniture with character, Lucy Johnson holds a special selling exhibition this weekend from September 3 to 5 at her showroom, a 17th century stone barn just outside Burford on the Cotswold Wildlife Park Estate, Oxfordshire.

THE Victoria and Albert Museum’s main autumn exhibition, opening this month, is devoted to a retrospective of Christopher Dresser, the pioneering designer who anticipated many of the major design styles of the 20th century. It is timed to coincide with the centenary of his death in 1904.

THE seventh annual Asian Art in London week will take place this year from November 4 to 12, with a launch party at the Victoria and Albert Museum on November 5.

TURN the clock back some 30 years, and regulars to Bonhams’ Knightbridge rooms might just recall a rather dapper, pinstripe-suited auctioneer by the name of Alexander Meddowes.

TWO Dulwich ladies have successfully tapped into the trend towards 20th century design and on Sunday September 19 hold their third Midcentury Modern event at the 1960s Christisson-designed refectory at the famous local public school Dulwich College, on Dulwich Common, London SE21.

FOLLOWING the success of last year’s inaugural reunion of former Phillips employees there will be a similar Phillips Reunited gathering next month on Tuesday September 14 at 6.30pm.

CINOA, the international confederation of associations of art and antiques dealers, is to sponsor an annual prize to celebrate major contributions to scholarship and the arts.

IN The Sunday Telegraph of July 25, Sarah Jane Checkland offered that old chestnut “what paintings sell”. Much of the analysis was predictable – “paintings of women and children outstrip those of men and the younger and more attractive the better” and “prospects are grim for dead animals”. However, a few results of her survey were more intriguing.

AT the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition this year, the end wall of Gallery II was completely taken up with a work which John Hoyland, Professor of Painting at the Academy Schools, described as “Terry Frost’s magnum opus”.

ON view at the Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, these two works by the late Sir Terry Frost represent a gap of some 60 years.

FOR the second year running, dealers and auctioneers are to face each other across the football pitch rather than the saleroom in the Antiques Trade Gazette-sponsored annual challenge.

THE British Antiques and Collectables Award winners have been announced for 2004, making Dreweatt Neate the first firm to win an auction house award twice.

SINCE 1986 Christopher Gange has been a dealer in 20th Century British Art at his Katharine House Gallery at The Parade, Marlborough, Wiltshire, but for the month of July, in a new departure, he is holding an important selling exhibition of British Studio Pottery, formerly part of his private collection.

CELEBRATING 15 years trading in their present premises, Anne and William Morris, who operate as Ruskin Decorative Arts, have a summer selling exhibition at 5 Talbot Court, Stow-on-the-Wold from July 17 to 25.

IT is not often that an antiques dealer ends up on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, but until September 19 that is just what is happening.

WHAT do the Society of Women Artists (SWA), founded in 1855, and Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers (RMS), founded in 1896, have in common?

FOLLOWING last year’s inaugural, successful summer show of graduate student’s work, The Metal Gallery at 90 Mount Street, London W1 have declared this an annual event and this year’s selling exhibition, The Graduate 2004, will run from July 21 to September 11.

THE considerable coverage given to Asia Week in London, on these pages and in the national press, rather neglected one gallery which was bringing the art of the Orient to London long before the Asia week promotion was thought of.