UK

Provincial by geography but far from provincial in outlook, auction houses from Essex to the Yorkshire Dales underlined the international nature of their trade at recent auctions. Cosmopolitanism covered both what was on offer and who was buying.

A bid of £5000 from a Contemporary art gallery in London secured this post-war portrait by the writer and Vorticist painter Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

Paintings by Leeds-born artist Louis H Grimshaw (1870-1943) are often overshadowed by his better-known father, John Atkinson Grimshaw (1863-93).

Several 19th and 20th century sporting paintings from named estates provided a healthy boost at two regional salerooms.

Paintings by 20th century artists who flocked to Paris during its artistic heyday were the main focus in a sale of Impressionist, Modern, Post War & Contemporary Art at south London auction house Roseberys (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

An intaglio ring became the second of the ‘lost’ Marlborough jewels to surface at auction in 2019 when it sold for £36,000 (plus 22.5% premium) in Cambridge.

This 12½in (31cm) Royal Copenhagen blanc de chine vase offered by Newcastle’s Anderson & Garland (22% buyer’s premium) on December 5 has an underglaze ‘three waves’ mark dating to c.1870-90.

Among the selection of instructional games and pastimes featured at Forum Auctions (25/12/12% buyer’s premium) on November 21 two of the more successful lots were published by Edward Wallis.

Holding for 22 years the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing, the great Cunard liner RMS Mauretania is a magical name for collectors of maritime memorabilia.

Alongside two key early maps of colonial North America (see News, ATG No 2422) the sale at Ramsay Cornish (20% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on December 7 was distinguished by five-figure bids for two rare items.

Michael Faraday’s laboratory notebook from 1851 includes a series of diagrams illustrating what he called ‘magnetic lines of force’ – the magnetic field lines that are central to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

“I will always be a painter of beaches,” declared Eugène Boudin (1824-98) in 1864.