The British Museum has recovered a further tranche of stolen and missing objects from its collection but over 800 items are still missing.

“It was no surprise that a single-owner sale of noble provenance and with royal connections was such a success”, said Thomas Jenner-Fust.

When it comes to the portraits of the Swiss artist Firmin Massot (1766- 1849), it tends to be depictions of young female sitters shown either full length of ‘jusqu’aux genoux’ (as far as the knees) – a format he often favoured – that attract the most attention commercially.

A bidding battle broke out at Bellmans in West Sussex for an early and engaging portrait by Dod Procter (1890-1972), setting the second highest auction price ever recorded for the artist.

Setting a record for any British-born female artist at auction, a Surrealist painting by Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) drew a lengthy bidding battle at Sotheby’s New York on May 15, taking the artist into a new league commercially.

Despite Peter Barkworth’s very public profile his art collecting was a much more personal matter

Marion Richardson (1892-1946), a pioneer of the child art movement, was described as ‘one of the most influential art innovators of our time’.

When James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) arrived in Paris in 1855 determined to pursue a career as an artist, printmaking was experiencing a revival.

Oil on canvas showing favoured subject of the artist takes top spot so far in UK sales outside London

To understand how European audiences viewed the Middle East in the 19th century, you could do worse than look at the body of work produced by Belgian artist Jan-Baptist Huysmans (1826-1906)*.

Following the major sum for a rare picture painted in India by Arthur William Devis (1762-1822) at Gorringe’s, another work by the artist flew over estimate a fortnight later in Devon.