Fine Art

An appeal launched by the Art Fund to save a Poussin painting for the nation has hit its £3.9m target.

Debate has long surrounded the well-known portrait of composer Johann Sebastian Bach by German court painter and official Leipzig portraitist Elias Gottlob Haussmann (1695-1774).

It wasn’t too long ago that Newlyn School artists were ranked right up alongside the leading lights of the Modern British art market.

Mellors and Kirk of Nottingham included a watercolour by Walter Langley (1852-1922) in their fine art sale on September 20-21.

Ever popular in the saleroom, the artist Edward Seago (1910-1974) has a following at auction that few 20th century British painters can match.

This 2ft 5in x 2ft ½in (75 x 62cm) bust length portrait drew the attention of a number of bidders with a particular interest in historical pictures when it appeared at auction in Dorchester.

This year’s Frieze week auction totals in London were largely consistent with 2011, but the much-publicised sale of Eric Clapton’s prize abstract by Gerhard Richter (b.1932) proved crucial in bolstering the overall figures.

Rare early paintings often come to major centres such as London, Paris and New York but later this month it will be the turn of Marseille in the South of France where the Maison de Ventes Leclere will offer a chance to purchase a fragment of an Italian primitive from the early Renaissance.

Once she was Picasso’s muse, now she is capping her own career of more than 25 years as an artist with a three-week exhibition at The Fosse Gallery in Stow-on-the-Wold.

Previously only known from a 1910 print and unrecorded for half a century, this 20in x 2ft 6in (50 x 75cm) oil by John William Godward (1861-1922) was sold by Lawrences in Crewkerne on October 12.

A near-derelict Victorian house on the Isle of Wight unearthed a number of interesting finds for Island Auction Rooms including silver, jewellery, pictures and other collectables which will be offered on October 16.

This 17in (43cm) high bronze by Demetre Chiparus has been consigned by an elderly lady who had owned it from new to Durrants’ sale on October 12 in Beccles, Suffolk.

The practical use of the Public Catalogue Foundation to the art trade is certainly obvious to Mayfair dealer Philip Mould, who is one of the project’s sponsors.

This Russian military medal demolished an estimate of £10,000-15,000 at a recent sale held at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

Joy Barnes (b.1912), a life-long artist and local Somerset resident who turns 100 next month, was present in the saleroom to watch her collection of Modern British art and studio ceramics sold by Greenslade Taylor Hunt in Taunton.

Prints by Eric Ravilious (1903-42) don’t crop up too often, so when Sworders’ offered a collection of five lithographs from his ‘Submarines’ series at latest sale in Stansted Mountfitchet, there was understandably a good level of interest.

The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction is to go on display to the public for six months at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Previously only known from a 1910 print and unrecorded for half a century, this 20in x 2ft 6in (50 x 75cm) oil by John William Godward (1861-1922) will be offered by Lawrences in Crewkerne on October 12.

The Scottish organisers and dealers Arte in Europa, best known for organising the ‘Edinburgh Art Fair’, are expanding south of the Border with a new fair in Cheshire.

Sculptures displayed in the athletes’ village of London’s Olympic Park are to be offered at auction.