UK

Members of the British Antique Dealers’ Association will vote later today on proposals to cut the size of its council to allow swifter decision making.

It may only be a few weeks until the 50th anniversary of the 1966 World Cup final but, judging by the way their team exited the Euros, England fans will have to wait a lot longer before their team ever again reaches the final a major football tournament.

It is two weeks since the first of the three major London summer fairs opened. With all three now concluded, ATG looks back on a summer season acknowledged as surprisingly successful.

A medieval chess piece produced one of the most exciting moments in Sotheby’s Treasures auction in London.

‘Lot and his Daughters’ by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) sold for £40m at Christie’s last night, setting a house record for an Old Master painting.

Jewellery specialists Symbolic & Chase have doubled the size of their premises with a move into an additional floor of their building in Mayfair.

At the time, Gary Lineker’s promise to present the new season’s first Match of the Day in his underpants if Leicester City won the Premier League didn’t seem like a rash pledge to make.

The original artwork for the cover of The Mighty Thor, published by Marvel Comics in 1968, sold for £36,000 at a recent auction at Charterhouse in Sherborne, Dorset.

An eleventh-hour private treaty deal has secured a photographic archive for the Penlee House Museum and Gallery.

A rare interior scene by Swiss painter Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789) was the top lot at Sotheby’s Old Masters evening sale last night, selling at £3.8m.

An early 17th century self-portrait by the English court painter William Dobson (1611-46) was knocked down at £920,000 at Bonhams’ Old Masters sale today.

Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler are set to move their antiques and decorative showroom to Pimlico Road in late September.

Roger Keverne, London dealer in Chinese ceramics and works of art and chairman of Asian Art in London, believes the Leave vote is the moment for the art market to re-examine some of its more onerous laws.

Among the works sold over estimate at today’s silver and jewellery auction at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet was a rare silver-gilt three-piece teaset that tripled expectations when it was knocked down at £4100.

Two key figures who left senior roles at Sotheby’s earlier this year, Henry Wyndham and Melanie Clore, are setting up their own fine art company.

Five pieces of furniture consigned from direct descendants of architect and craftsman Sidney Barnsley (1865-1926) drew bidders’ attention at Woolley & Wallis’ latest Arts and Crafts sale in Salisbury.

More than 25,160 visitors attended the 44th annual Art & Antiques Fair, Olympia which concluded its seven day run yesterday.

The Contemporary art sales in London last week saw a reduced supply of major works affect the overall totals which came in at their lowest levels since 2013. However, the material on offer generally met with decent demand and fears of a Brexit meltdown in the market did not materialise.

The latest themed auction held by Christie’s was their ‘Defining British Art’ evening sale in London. View ATG’s selection of 10 highlights here.