Oil painting

A REWARD of £50,000 is being offered in the bid to recover more than £1m worth of art stolen in a violent theft from a private collector in Bruton, Somerset.

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 work of Edward Seago (1910-1974) has always been popular. Even during his own lifetime, Colnaghi’s annual exhibitions of his paintings between 1946 and 1966 on Old Bond Street drew such fierce competition that buyers, some of whom had queued overnight, were restricted to one picture each.

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.

Colnaghi-Bernheimer of London and Salomon Lilian of Amsterdam have unveiled a rare religious painting by the Dutch 17th century master Frans Hals.

SOTHEBY'S keenly anticipated sale of the collection of the late Sir David and Lady Scott on November 19 provided a confidence-boosting result. Any pre-sale fears that the ‘unfashionable’ Victorian pictures it contained might damage results were soon put aside.

DESPITE falling stocks, banks freezing and now top-end contemporary art taking a tumble, Samuel John Peploe's (1871-1935) Roses sold at £440,000 hammer to a UK private buyer at Christie's Scottish art sale in Edinburgh. With premium included, this was a record for a Scottish Colourist, although not a hammer record.

The Lenkiewicz Foundation have exposed two fake Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002) portraits after they were seen advertised for sale on a dealer's website. The dealer immediately withdrew the two paintings, a self-portrait and Study of Lisa Stokes, once contacted by the foundation.

WHETHER or not the art market will be able to steer its way through the current financial storm remains an open question. But providing some relief from the constant talk of falling stocks and the global credit crunch, a pair of Dutch marine pictures saw some strong bidding at the latest picture sale held by Woolley and Wallis on October 8.

The largest ever retrospective exhibition of the work of popular Modern British painter Edward Seago (1910-1974) will be held from September 8-19 at the Bond Street dealers Colnaghi, who represented the artist in his heyday.

A rediscovered painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was the toast of the Old Master auction series in London last week. Missing for almost 200 years and presumed to have been destroyed, La Surprise was offered at Christie’s evening sale on July 8.

A TRIPLE portrait of three Elizabethan girls that sold for £620,000 at Christie’s sale of the Simon Sainsbury Collection has now been identified as a picture of the Egerton sisters from c.1601-2.

TWO very different scenes of cricket matches in progress sold recently at very different locations. The artists themselves could also hardly be more contrasting: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and L.S. Lowry (1887-1976).

It’s hard to believe there are still undiscovered works by the most renowned artists hanging unnoticed in dusty corners of private houses. But that is what a Christie’s valuation team discovered last year.

Six works hooked off wall and reeled in through barred window

Dukes have negotiated the sale to the nation of two major Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Music by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Hamlet and Ophelia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti were found in the Oxfordshire home of the late Jean Preston that also yielded two panels from the San Marco altarpiece by Fra Angelico sold by the Dorchester auctioneers last year for £1.7m.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

There was high excitement at The Auction Centre, Leyburn on March 30 when Sean Keating’s Ulysses off Connemara shot to a remarkable £400,000 (plus 15/10 per cent premium), a record for the artist and a house record for Tennants.

THE imminent smoking ban and the government’s attempts to tackle binge drinking wouldn’t have gone down too well with the Reffley Brethren.

The highlight of this year’s Old Master picture series in London was a pair of Roman vedute by Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1721-1780 Warsaw).