UK

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Darnley Fine Art in west London specialises in paintings from the 16th-20th centuries and is a specialist in 19th century Orientalist painting of the Middle East and prints by David Roberts. The Milner Street gallery’s Adrian Pett weighs in on shifting trends – and ales.

The same French collection that brought the fine pair of Boutet pistols to the Thomas Del Mar Sale on December 6 also included a number of later Continental pistols that were rare and certainly unfamiliar to most British collectors.

The New Year is traditionally quiet in the salerooms but the 1800-lot Cheetham collection generated some real excitement at Adam Partridge (18% buyer’s premium) in Macclesfield.

A complete suit of well-matched period armour is rare indeed, so there was no doubting the star of Bonhams’ (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in London.

A reminder of the dramatic drop in demand over recent decades for Victorian landscapes was evident in Gloucestershire where two such oils by Sidney Richard Percy (1822-86) went under the hammer.

Holt’s (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale in London on December 14 included two prime examples of weapons designed to get their owners out of a tight corner.

A small painting by Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison (1855- 1936) took a mid-estimate £6000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

More than 100 paintings owned by the Royal Society of Marine Artists are to be sold at auction in Norfolk.

Mossgreen is only the latest in a list of auctioneers that have gone under owing money to its core customers – consignors.

A pastel portrait of a fashionable young Georgian woman in an ostrich feather hat and blue coat with her dog topped the picture section at Lincolnshire saleroom Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium).

A fragment of the flag believed to have flown from HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar came to national attention this month when it was knocked down for £240,000 at Sotheby’s.

Detailed and dark, the prints of Gerald Brockhurst (1890-1978) offer striking portraits of both the famous and fictional from the first half of the 20th century.

As winter moves into spring, London will host two major events for arms and armour enthusiasts.

The antiques-rich Devon town of Honiton was famed for its bobbin lacemaking since the 16th century when it was introduced by Flemish refugees.

An 1894 pencil drawing of a street in Antwerp by Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903) was among the last contents offered at auction from West Horsley Place, the Grade I-listed mansion in Surrey owned by historian and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne.

MADAM – You may call me a pedant but in Brighton there is no such place as the North Lanes.

Dedicated to those who campaigned for 50 years for the right of women to vote, the Museum of London is currently holding an exhibition of images and objects chosen from the museum’s vast collections of suffragette material.

Portable lighters appeared in the early 20th century, with Dunhill being the most collectable name and watch lighters regarded as most covetable.

The latest recent arms and armour sales on both sides of the Atlantic serves only to reinforce the impression that pistols remain a huge favourite with collectors in this field.