Drawings & Pastels

THE Italian painter Pietro Annigoni (1910-1988) is forever associated in English minds with his dramatic 1955 portrait of The Queen, which now hangs in The National Portrait Gallery and which still has plenty of admirers, including HM herself.

The brutality and horror of everyday life in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp can be seen in a collection of pen, ink and watercolour sketches to be offered on April 16 at Bonhams, New Bond Street’s sale of topographical pictures.

Last summer Christie’s Old Master drawings expert Nicolas Schwed was sitting at his desk in Paris checking through his e-mails when he came across this 460-year-old face staring back at him from his computer screen.

LONDON is especially strong on niche events and specialist fairs do not come much more quintessentially English than The Watercolours and Drawings Fair which will be held for the fourth time at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, London W1 from January 31 to February 3.

UK: SIR Alfred James Munnings proved as great a magnet as ever at Sotheby’s South’s Billingshurst rooms on July 18 when a watercolour sketch for one of his oil paintings fetched a hammer price of £62,000, more than double the low estimate.

UK: IN 1905, the Leicester Galleries, regular show place for Arthur Rackham R.W.S. (1867-1939) introduced Rackham to J.M. Barrie and as they say, the rest is history.

A pencil drawing by Bronzino (1503-72) earned Fr10.6m (£960,000) at Piasa on November 20, the highest ever price for an old master drawing in Paris, and a world record for a Bronzino drawing.

THE second week of London’s prestige midsummer sales saw the Modern given way to the traditional with a flurry of exceptional prices for Old Master paintings and drawings and Renaissance works of art.

UK: ONE of the most important drawings to appear at auction in London will be put up for sale at Christie's on July 4.