Old Masters

TEN leading Parisian Old Master galleries have announced plans to launch a select new fair in the French capital next year.

GENERATING a 25-minute bidding battle at Halls' sale in Shrewsbury on October 20, The Earl of Oxford's Roan or Bloody shouldered Arabian by John Wootton (c.1682-1764) set a new house record when it was finally knocked down to an anonymous UK buyer for £326,000.

LONDON-based Russian art specialists MacDougall’s have appointed three people to establish an Old Masters and 19th century European art department.

HAD it not been for the headline-grabbing and record-breaking J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the latest Old Master auctions in London would have seemed a bit flat.

A SPECIAL addition to Christie’s mid-season Old Masters and 19th century art sale in New York on June 9 is what the auctioneers describe as “an exceptional selection of European paintings and sculpture” from the former Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in Manhattan.

CONSIDERED the finest work by the Italian Baroque master Domenico Zampieri, Il Domenichino (1581-1641), in private hands, this painting of St John the Evangelist has been saved for the nation. It has gone on display in the National Gallery's Baroque rooms.

SWISS-based animal philanthropist Jeanne Marchig is suing Christie's over the female portrait sold as '19th century German' at Christie's New York in 1998 for $19,500 but now called La Bella Principessa and claimed as a £100m work by Leonardo da Vinci.

SPEAKING to ATG at the end of last week, London Old Master dealer Johnny Van Haeften still had not actually seen the monumental painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) for which he paid 6.1m euros (£5.65m) at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna on April 21.

Five months after ATG revealed the reattribution of La Bella Principessa to Leonardo da Vinci, the man who spotted it is ready to unveil another major find.

DRAMATICALLY overshooting a £2000-3000 estimate, this small unsigned Mannerist oil on slate depicting Venus and Cupid attracted the attention of at least ten bidders at Rosebery's of West Norwood, South London on March 9.

Culture minister Margaret Hodge has placed a temporary export ban on Raphael's Head of a Muse after ruling that an attempt should be made to keep the £26m drawing in the UK.

TAKE a beautiful sitter, a leading portraitist, add a touch of glamour and offer with an appetising estimate. Such is the recipe for a riotous bidding feast.

MAJOR American museums played an active role as both buyers and sellers in the latest Old Master sales in New York.

The latest Old Master sales in London underlined the importance for auctioneers of securing the best works by major names.

THE dealer/collector who bought what is now widely thought to be a previously unrecognised work by Leonardo Da Vinci has given ATG details of the events leading up to the revelation.

ATG correspondent SIMON HEWITT gains exclusive access to the evidence used to unveil what the world's leading scholars say is the first major Leonardo Da Vinci find for 100 years.

THE busiest week of the year for Old Masters in London provided further signs that the top end of this market is surviving the downturn better than its modern counterparts.

SLEEPER spotter Philip Mould has unveiled his latest discovery – an early Thomas Gainsborough landscape of Ipswich painted in the mid to late 1740s.

WHILE £50m was finally raised in February to keep the Duke of Sutherland's Titian painting Diana and Actaeon in the UK, an attempt to raise a further £50m by 2012 for the Duke's Diana and Callisto is already underway.

Washington, D.C. auctioneers Sloans & Kenyon found this English period work by the Italian Baroque painter Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) in the basement of a local home.