Art Market

The artist Mortimer Menpes (1855-1938) was something of a jack of all trades. But contrary to the old adage he was a master of many.

Over recent years, works painted in India by Arthur William Devis (1762-1822) have become a valuable proposition.

A work described ‘the masterpiece of Nathaniel Sparks (1880-1957)’ set a major record for the artist at Cheffins last month.

When it came to works drawing good competition at the latest series of Old Master auction in New York at the end of May, three works in particular caught the eye at Christie’s.

A string of works by East Anglian artists, each with their own well-established market, drew notable attention at the latest specialist sale held by Reeman Dansie (25% buyer’s premium).

The difficulties at the top end of the Modern and Contemporary art market were very much in evidence at the latest flagship auction series in New York.

Two pictures with natural history subjects drew the strongest competition among the Indian works of art consigned from the collection of the late Francis Golding (1944-2013) to a recent Roseberys’ (26% buyer’s premium) sale.

Despite ongoing concerns that the current economic uncertainty, anaemic growth and trade tariffs is affecting the supply of major lots, the value to auction houses of paintings by ‘big names’ was underlined at Lyon &Turnbull’s latest Modern Made auction.

The earliest known painted work by the Indian sculptor Ganpatrao Mhatre (1879-1947) drew international interest at a recent sale at Chiswick Auctions (26% buyer’s premium).

At the time that the London-born artist George Chapman (1908-1993) first encountered the Rhondda Valley in 1953, he happened to be reading a series of books by US writer William Faulkner.

A market-fresh Orientalist scene by John Frederick Lewis (1804-76), unseen in public for a generation, led the latest sale of 19th Century and British Impressionist Art at Bonhams.