Ink Drawing

Bid to £65,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale that ran online from July 12-19 was the ink drawing by Ernest Shephard shown below.

Thomas Sandby’s (1721-98) architectural drawings are significant part of the artist’s oeuvre.

The sale at Thomas R Callan (20% buyer’s premium) in Ayr on December 3-4 included a sketchbook by George Chinnery (1774-1852) dated 1838.

It is thought that Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) executed at least a hundred drawings featuring the Punchinelli, the hook-nosed, humpbacked clowns which were central to the commedia dell’arte. Jonathan Franks reports.

Drawings by the great fell-walking guidebook author catch the mood of escapism

Label, listed provenance and technical qualities lead to a contest to land a possible big Guercino catch.

Three small sketches of polar scenes caught the attention at a recent auction held by Lawrences (20% buyer’s premium) of Bletchingley in Surrey.

One section of the Asian art sale at Koller in Zurich on December 3, with its own catalogue, is devoted to a private collection of Chinese ink drawings.

A record price of £10,200 was paid last month for a pen and ink sketch by fell-walking legend Alfred Wainwright at 1818 Auctioneers of Milnthorpe, Cumbria.

This Neoclassical drawing by the Swedish sculptor Johann Tobias Sergel (1740-1814) proved very popular in the opening Old Master works on paper section of the mixed-discipline traditional sale held by the Hôtel des Ventes de Monte-Carlo 25% buyer’s premium) on November 27 in Monaco.

George du Maurier (1834-96) joined the staff at Punch magazine in 1865, drawing two ink cartoons a week until his eyesight deteriorated in 1891. His most common targets were the affected manners of Victorian society and Britain’s growing middle class in particular.

A collection of rediscovered drawings by the 19th century artist Elizabeth Frances Batty (1791-1875) feature at Bloomsbury gallery Abbott and Holder this month.

Painted by Lt Gen Henry Hope Crealock (1831-91), this 6ft 8in (2m) wide pen and ink drawing is an eyewitness account of The Action of Bareilly – the battle of the last stronghold of Indian independence in 1858.

The setting for this near-monochrome self-portrait, below, by Walter Sickert (1860-1942) is the Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo in Venice and shows the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni and the Scuola Grande di San Marco.

This work above by the popular cartoonist Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) was a highlight of Mallams’ library sale on June 21.

A superb suite of the original ink and gouache drawings – one shown here – made by Carl Otto Czeschka to illustrate a 1908 edition of Die Niebelungen dem Deutschen Volke sold at $290,000 (£224,805) in a Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of June 6 called Important Design.

Francis Picabia (1879-1953) famously declared that he wanted to change his ideas “as often as one would change one’s shirt”, and he embraced many different artistic styles throughout his life.