Oil, Acrylic paintings & Mixed Media

There was high drama at Christie's latest decorative arts sale in London, when half the £3.1m total came from this Glasgow school panel by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, which sold to an American collector for £1.5m (plus premium).

It’s hard to believe there are still undiscovered works by the most renowned artists hanging unnoticed in dusty corners of private houses. But that is what a Christie’s valuation team discovered last year.

Six works hooked off wall and reeled in through barred window

Dukes have negotiated the sale to the nation of two major Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Music by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti were found in the Oxfordshire home of the late Jean Preston that also yielded two panels from the San Marco altarpiece by Fra Angelico sold by the Dorchester auctioneers last year for £1.7m.

Scottish auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull started off their year on January 10 with the sale of the Deloitte Art Collection at The Royal Academy in London.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

There was high excitement at The Auction Centre, Leyburn on March 30 when Sean Keating’s Ulysses off Connemara shot to a remarkable £400,000 (plus 15/10 per cent premium), a record for the artist and a house record for Tennants.

THE imminent smoking ban and the government’s attempts to tackle binge drinking wouldn’t have gone down too well with the Reffley Brethren.

The highlight of this year’s Old Master picture series in London was a pair of Roman vedute by Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1721-1780 Warsaw).

The discovery of two small panels by Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455) in a semi-detached house in Oxford ranks as one of the most remarkable art finds this country has ever witnessed.

Two sections of a painting by Francis Hayman are being officially re-united for the first time in almost three centuries at London dealer Philip Mould’s new gallery in Dover Street.

Jackson Pollock’s 1948 drip painting Number 5 has set a new record for a painting. Mexican financier David Martinez has reportedly paid $140m for it in a private deal brokered by Sotheby’s.

IT would have been the most expensive picture ever sold. At $139m, the private deal between two American billionaire buddies would have upped the record high for any painting by $4m. But the deal is now off.

CHRISTIE’s have announced that they are to sell the four remaining works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) that were part of the high profile Bloch-Bauer restitution case.

This recently discovered oil landscape by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97) will be offered for sale by Richard Winterton at Hilliards Cross, Lichfield on August 31.

Italy has witnessed a sudden, perhaps unexpected, surge in its auction scene with a series of record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s, the most remarkable of which has been the Milan sale of a cycle of Tiepolo canvases on May 30.

Pablo Picasso has become the ultimate luxury brand. On May 3 at Sotheby’s New York Picasso’s rare and iconic 1941 portrait, Dora Maar au chat, became the world’s second most expensive painting when it sold for $85m (£48.3m) to a mystery buyer in the room, widely presumed to be representing a Russian oligarch.

LESS than two months remains to find the final £116,057 towards the £1.4m price of a unique portrait of the 17th century poet John Donne.

Establishing a new landmark for a picture lot sold at auction outside London, two portraits by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) took £900,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory salerooms last week.

On a cold January 26 night in Edinburgh, a packed saleroom at Lyon & Turnbull witnessed a defining moment in the Scottish art market.