Old Masters

A pair of 19th century Venetian views by Italian artist Francesco Zanin proved to be the high point of a Silver Jubilee auction held by Ewbank auctioneers of Surrey on September 20 and provided their owner, a local Dorking family, with an unexpected financial bonus when they sold for multiples of their original estimates.

This summer has seen a spate of sleepers awoken in provincial salerooms, but inevitably the one that grabbed the headlines in the national press was the tale of the rediscovered ‘Titian’.

after months of pre-sale coverage in the media, the two recently rediscovered panels of Dominican saints from Fra Angelico’s celebrated 1438-40 high altarpiece for the Church of San Marco in Florence finally came under the hammer at Duke’s of Dorchester last Thursday, when they fetched £1.7m.

A spectacular sleeper was awoken in Sweden on December 5 when an oil sketch catalogued as in the manner of Peter Paul Rubens sold to a British buyer at SEK16.6m (£1,298,000) amidst speculation it was by the artist himself.

Among the highlights of Sotheby’s New York’s $96.9m Important Old Master Paintings sale on January 25 was Portrait of Captain Robert Shore Milnes painted in 1771-72 by Joseph Wright of Derby.

As recent London sales have demonstrated, demand for top-class Italian maiolica is on something of a roll. There is an international roster of collectors who are attracted to this colourful ceramic version of Italian Old Master painting.

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).

The discovery of two small panels by Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455) in a semi-detached house in Oxford ranks as one of the most remarkable art finds this country has ever witnessed.

Two sections of a painting by Francis Hayman are being officially re-united for the first time in almost three centuries at London dealer Philip Mould’s new gallery in Dover Street.

MASTER Drawings in New York, a new Anglo-American trade initiative will be launched in January. It is modelled on Master Drawings in London which has been held since 2001.

Christie’s are to merge their British and Old Master pictures departments in London.

This recently discovered oil landscape by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97) will be offered for sale by Richard Winterton at Hilliards Cross, Lichfield on August 31.

Italy has witnessed a sudden, perhaps unexpected, surge in its auction scene with a series of record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s, the most remarkable of which has been the Milan sale of a cycle of Tiepolo canvases on May 30.

Auction house acquire leading Old Master dealer with debts of $26m

At first glance, this 7ft 6in x 5ft 7in (2.28 x 1.70m) canvas, right, of the Temptation of Adam by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1651-1717) might seem to be a fairly standard, if unusually large, depiction of one of the most hackneyed religious themes in Western art.

A new auction high for the Neapolitan Impressionist Vincenzo Irolli (1860-1949) was established by Sotheby’s (20-15.42% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) last month in Milan when they offered this oil on canvas entitled La Pesca Fortunata (A good haul) in their sale of 19th century pictures on December 13.

The main talking point of Gorringes’ (15% buyer’s premium) December 7-8 sale in Bexhill-on-Sea was the remarkable £260,000 bid on the second day for the early 17th century pietra dura table top featured on the front page of Antiques Trade Gazette no. 1670 (25th December/1st January).

With TEFAF Maastricht beckoning, it was hardly surprising that Dutch and Flemish painting should capture most of major prices at the December round of Old Master paintings sales in London.

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has acquired a devotional panel of the Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna (active by 1278; died 1319) from the Stoclet family in Brussels.

SOLD for £25,000 at Sotheby’s on June 25 was a group of letters, documents and sketches by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, or Il Guercino [the ‘Squinter’], his painter nephew, Benedetto Gennari and his patron Claudio Bertazzoli, that relate to the former’s altarpiece for Santa Maria della Pieta dei Teatini in Ferrara – The Purification of the Virgin.