Fine Art

Researching Old Master paintings is sometimes likened to putting together the pieces of a jigsaw. But for one upcoming work, it seems this was quite literally the case.

Dealer Andrew Sim has sold 14 Second World War pictures by Polish-born artist Feliks Topolski (1907-89) to the Imperial War Museum.

A drawing offered at a Paris auction with an attribution to Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528) was hammered down at €1.13m (£980,000).

St James’s art dealer Derek Johns is offering a portrait of Sir Everard Fawkener, a former British ambassador to Constantinople, by Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-89).

Drawings Week in the French capital included a wide variety of styles, eras and value. Pictured here is a selection of highlights and some more affordable items from the vast array of works on paper of all types offered during Drawings Week in Paris in late March.

The ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ is currently on show at Paris Contemporary art dealership Galerie Kamel Mennour opposite a work more than 400 years its junior.

George Catlin’s watercolour sketches of North American Indians, reported in ATG No 2387, were the star turns as far as original artworks were concerned at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 28. However, two original, signed caricatures by Max Beerbohm also brought good results.

Not everything in the spring drawings sales required a six-figure bank balance to purchase. Plenty of more affordable works appeared across all the Paris rooms – both Drouot and the independents (and, of course, in the various dealers shows and fairs). Pictured here are some works within the reach of less elevated budgets.

A collaborative portrait between two revered 19th century equestrian painters will lead a sale of sporting art at Essex saleroom Sworders on April 30.

UK fine art dealer Dickinson features a single-owner collection of 20th century masters at TEFAF New York Spring next month.

In the 1980s, the 3ft 7in x 2ft 9in (1.1m x 85cm) canvas of Saint Bartholomew being offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 30 was tentatively ascribed to Caravaggio. The treatment of light and shadow and the extreme naturalism in the portrayal certainly indicate a proximity to the revolutionary artist.

A drawing by the Indian artist Francis Newton Souza (1924- 2004) which he created on the verge of finding international fame in the 1950s drew intense bidding at a recent Dreweatts (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) auction.

'Battlefield' is among the works Piano Nobile includes in an exhibition of Paul Nash paintings at Frieze New York.

This gouache is one of around 10 drawings, watercolours and gouaches by René Gruau, the Italian-born fashion illustrator who was renowned for his Paris haute couture and promotional illustrations, which will feature in Tajan’s Paris auction of modern drawings on May 15.

Stephen Ongpin deals in drawings and watercolours from the 16th-20th centuries in London, St James’s.

A watercolour of Lindisfarne Priory off the Northumberland coast sold for more than 12 times its guide at Taunton saleroom Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium).

This Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803- 1902) cattle landscape resurfaced at an auction in Leominster after a century in the same collection.