London

Early maps and charts, previously owned by a Brazilian banker convicted of money laundering, surfaced for sale at Chiswick Auctions last week.

Guy Peppiatt specialises in 18th and 19th century British watercolours and drawings and is based in Mason’s Yard, St James’s.

Slow and steady. That, dealers reported, was the general course of sales at the recent British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) fair.

Panter & Hall holds an exhibition of the works of Alberto Morrocco (1917-1998) in its Pall Mall gallery this month.

In a career of remarkable highs and lows, incorporating high political office, financial scandal and near bankruptcy, enormous success as a novelist and imprisonment for perjury during a libel case that he had won years earlier, Jeffrey Archer has himself been the subject of many a caricature and cartoon.

During the later decades of the 20th century, post-war British artist Alan Davie (1920-2014) fell into relative obscurity. However, recent months have been eventful for the painter’s legacy.

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.

On the Baroque façade of Girona Cathedral in Catalonia stands the figures of Saint Joseph and Saint James, carved in the 1960s by local sculptor Anton Casamor (1907-79).

A previously unpublished John Constable sketch drew prolonged bidding at south London saleroom Roseberys.

Peoples of Russia part II… On these pages last week (ATG No 2330) mention was made of the series of porcelain figures of ethnic Russians produced by the Imperial Factory in St Petersburg from the late 18th century up to the revolution.