Front Page and News

The UK's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has funding in place for vernacular portraits ‘owned by ordinary people’. It is calling on the trade to help it acquire works for a new exhibition centred on identity before the era of painted portraiture.

Lyon & Turnbull has appointed Philip Smith, former head of modern & post-war art and design at Mallams, to the newly created role of associate director for modern art and design.

A private museum in south-west Germany has bought a portrait by Swiss artist Jean- Etienne Liotard (1702-89) from London Old Master dealer Derek Johns.

More than $120m of Asian art was sold at auction during last week’s New York Asia Week.

The art and antiques trade is facing further money laundering regulation from the European Union.

An American private collector bid £15,000 for a rare Clarice Cliff figure group at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

A cluster of new fairs is planned in Europe this year.

Online channels are an increasing source of new buyers for both auction houses and dealers, despite the art and antiques sector being behind the wider economy when it comes to use of ecommerce, a new global report says.

Two businessmen from Auckland have rescued New Zealand auction house Webb’s from administration after the collapse of parent company Mossgreen.

Among the first sales of BADA 2018 was this modernist Archibald Knox silver and pink enamel inkwell sold from the stand of The Peartree Collection for more than £10,000.

An investigation in Germany into an Israeli art dealer, charged with being the ringleader of an international fraud ring, has concluded after the two central allegations against him were dropped.

An unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet was this set of four early real tennis rackets. They came from a client in the North of England and had been owned by the family for many years.

Unbolted continues its move into the art and antiques sector with Holts the latest firm to offer its lending services to customers.

Leaders of four African countries have called on the UK and the EU to ban the trade in antique ivory to help stop elephant poaching.

William George, an online-only auctioneer which ceased trading antique ivory in 2017, is setting up a group called Auctioneers Against Ivory for auctioneers considering their own antique ivory strategies.

Art market experts are calling for the trade to tackle the widely reported claim that the sector is unregulated, made by a defendant in a $50m international money-laundering case.

London auctioneer Roseberys is to offer a previously unpublished sketch by John Constable on March 21.

A long-running dispute over the export of an important Old Master painting from Portugal has finally been settled after authorities ended an attempt to have the work repatriated.

LAPADA, the Association of Art & Antiques Dealers, has appointed a former head of the Chelsea Flower Show as its new fairs and events director.

The landlord behind the redevelopment of Cork Street in Mayfair is planning a clutch of new gallery openings and art events as building work comes to an end.