Impressionist and Modern Art

SETTING a house record at Cotswolds saleroom Tayler & Fletcher and helping them to their highest ever sale total, this small and previously unrecorded portrait by Anders Zorn (1860-1920), fetched £82,000 in Cheltenham.

In the wider world, the photographer Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) is best known for the fact that it was in his former studio on the Boulevard des Capucines that the Impressionists held their first group exhibition in 1874.

ONE of Germany’s official war artists, Roman Zenzinger, who has long remained in the shadows because of his apparent hatred of the Nazis, is now having his works bought to light.

A SALE at the Hotel Drouot in Paris devoted to minor works by Picasso was called off at the last minute because of controversy over provenance.

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

LA Minotauromachie from 1935 is arguably the masterpiece of the Pablo Picasso's 2000 or so different printed works.

CHISWICK Auctions are set to sell one of the most important early paintings by the German Expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) to have come to market in recent years.

WHEN it comes to modern prints, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) stands in a league with only Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol as artists who have made sums getting on for £1m at auction. However, Bonhams broke through that barrier on July 13 when they offered an extremely rare version of one of the Norwegian artist’s best known images.

THE latest Impressionist & Modern art auction series in London saw rising returns for the salerooms but buyers reacted unfavourably to heavy estimates on the most expensive works.

IT may have been an exceptional piece that generated an equally exceptional level of presale interest but, even still, few people present at Christie's Paris for the sale of Amedeo Modigliai's (1884-1920) Tête were expecting it to become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in France.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

THE return of free-spending at the very top end of the art market continued apace at last week’s Impressionist and Modern sales series in New York as boom-time levels of bidding were seen on the blockbuster lots. For the second time this year, a new record was set for any artwork ever sold at auction.

A LONG-lost array of paintings, prints, books and drawings owned by legendary art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) will be one of the talking points of the Paris summer season when it goes on sale at Sotheby’s on June 29.

FOLLOWING the confidential settlement made between The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation and the heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Picasso’s 1903 portrait of his friend Angel Fernandez de Soto will be offered for sale at Christie’s in London on June 23 with an estimate of £30-40m.

If the price paid for Alberto Giacometti's (1901-1966) sculpture L'Homme qui Marche I is anything to go by, then the art market is now striding out of recession. Selling for £58m (plus premium) at Sotheby's evening sale on February 3, it became the most expensive object ever sold at auction.

SERIOUS levels of demand emerged for works at the very top end of the art market as this month’s flagship Impressionist and Modern art auction series raised a combined hammer total of £225.8m, massively up on the £108.8m for the equivalent series last year.

THE London Jewish Museum of Art (the Ben Uri Gallery) have announced that they have purchased a crucifixion by Marc Chagall for what they believe to be a fraction of its real value at a Paris auction.

AN agreement over the disputed Blue Period Picasso painting The Absinthe Drinker may well lead to a clearer legal definition of what constitutes art sold under Nazi duress.

THE latest series of contemporary art auctions in New York provided some further evidence of confidence returning at the top end of the market.