Ink Drawing

A sale packed with English works on paper spanning the early 19th to early 21st centuries takes place at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on September 18.

A political cartoon showing the face of Margaret Thatcher emerging from the side of her handbag was one of the top lots at the Sotheby’s London auction of Gerald Scarfe’s drawings this week.

An illustration of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was the star attraction at a recent auction in Wales.

Among the best Modern British pictures offered at Lawrences of Crewkerne on July 6 was Edward Burra’s (1905-76) ‘Funfair’, which was consigned from a good local collection barely 24 hours before the catalogue went to press.

Appearing in Carmarthen on July 24, this illustration of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin by author Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was discovered during a routine house call by auctioneers Peter Francis.

Previously unknown to scholars, this exceptional pen and ink drawing by Canaletto (1697-1768) set an auction record for a work on paper by the artist at the latest series of Old Master sales in London.

Wind in the Willows characters Mole, Ratty and Toad are to go under the hammer at Michael Bowman of Newton Abbot in Devon on May 5.

IN the early hours of August 6, a Henry Moore sketch and two oil paintings were stolen from Trinity House on the High Street in Broadway, south Worcestershire.

WILTSHIRE auctioneers Netherhampton Salerooms were celebrating a new house record on March 3 after a disbound album of Far Eastern topographical drawings sold for £43,000.

FOUND hanging in a Boston bathroom, the whereabouts of this Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) illustration had been a mystery for more than 80 years. Entitled The Climax, and hanging in the lavatory alongside another Beardsley pen-and-ink drawing called A Platonic Lament, the owners had no idea of its significance.

TO the connoisseurial mind, it was not the paintings that lit up the Old Master series in London in early July but rather three rediscovered drawings by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) offered in a dedicated Old Master and 19th century works on paper sale at Christie’s on July 8.

A world record price for a comic-strip illustration was paid at a specalist sale at Artcurial in Paris on March 29: Georges Remi Hergé’s 1932 ink-and-gouache design for the cover of Tintin en Amérique.