Fine Art

THE busiest week of the year for Old Masters in London provided further signs that the top end of this market is surviving the downturn better than its modern counterparts.

SLEEPER spotter Philip Mould has unveiled his latest discovery – an early Thomas Gainsborough landscape of Ipswich painted in the mid to late 1740s.

THE readjustment taking place at the top end of the contemporary and modern art market was once again in evidence at the latest flagship London auction series.

WHILE £50m was finally raised in February to keep the Duke of Sutherland's Titian painting Diana and Actaeon in the UK, an attempt to raise a further £50m by 2012 for the Duke's Diana and Callisto is already underway.

ALTHOUGH this summer’s Russian art auctions in London failed to bring the gold rush of previous years, there was some relief in the salerooms that demand did not sink even further.

SUSSEX auctioneer John Nicholson is claiming a significant breakthrough in establishing the existence of artist Pietro Psaier and his links with Andy Warhol.

COLOGNE auctioneers Van Ham offered this oil painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), hidden from public view for over 70 years, at their latest sale.

TURN the leaves of ‘A sketchbook belonging to Lady Julia Conyers...’ and you will find some 80 drawings and watercolours by Lady Julia and her society friends that are for the most part unexceptional and predictable.

There were local, or at least county, connections when this large linocut print, ‘Church and Thunderstorm’ by Edward Bawden (1903-1989) was offered by Essex auctioneers Sworders at their spring Country House sale.

AFTER the resignation of the speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin last week, the subject of this cartoon of the 1830s could hardy have been more topical.

Washington, D.C. auctioneers Sloans & Kenyon found this English period work by the Italian Baroque painter Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) in the basement of a local home.

Conservative estimates tailored to new realities enabled the New York flagship sales of post-War and contemporary art to set solid selling rates. But, for both major houses, the financial gulf between this year and 2008 was enormous.

Thin catalogues and thin demand for aggressively-priced works by Modern masters characterised the recent sales of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York.

CHRISTIE’S are to replace a wide range of specialist picture sales with a new sale category incorporating 600 years of traditional Western art. The change will be implemented worldwide from May across their salerooms in London, New York, Milan, Paris and Amsterdam.

LONDON Sculpture Week, which was scheduled for June 12 to 19, has been suspended due to lack of sponsorship.

More details have emerged regarding the ‘breach-of-contract’ lawsuit which claims that Christie’s backed out of a $40m guarantee made to secure a Francis Bacon self-portrait for sale.

Next month a Russian businessman and collector will open the world’s first museum dedicated to the Russian Imperial jeweller Fabergé.

ST James's gallery Dickinson had one of the most impressive selections of paintings at TEFAF Maastricht and, like many other dealers in Old and Modern Masters, enjoyed a good fair.

DAVID Smith of Neptune Fine Art, the dealer who was duped into buying a fake Lowry painting, has told ATG that potential buyers should be exceptionally careful when considering purchasing a Lowry painting.

DUTCH police have recovered eight paintings stolen from Robert Noortman’s gallery in Maastricht in 1987. The works, which included valuable works by Renoir and Pissarro, were traced to two small towns in the south of Holland after an alleged middleman in Dubai made an attempt to sell the paintings back to the insurers for a reported €5m (£4.5m).