Art and antiques news from 2003

IF his 34th Cheshire Autumn Antiques and Fine Art Fair at Tatton Park over the weekend of September 4 to 7 was an indicator then Robert Bailey’s Harrogate fair should turn over nicely.

ALL 43 exhibitors at Caroline Penman’s Petersfield Antiques Fair enjoyed some business at the Festival Hall from September 5 to 7 with a majority reporting good sales.

Fred T. Jane is a turn-of-the-century artist who doesn’t make much of an impact in the sort of standard reference works that line the office walls of serious auctioneers and dealers.

If the forthcoming 20/21 British Art Fair at the Commonwealth Institute proves as successful as many dealers are hoping, there will be no shortage of competition for this signed and inscribed Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) watercolour, right, Hull’s Mill, coming up for sale at the Stansted Mountfichet rooms of Sworders (15% buyer’s premium) on October 21.

THE United States has taken a lead in art restitution by setting up a website to track Nazi-looted art. The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal which has just gone online, will provide a database of museums collections – 70 have signed up so far – for checks on art that disappeared in Europe between 1933 and 1945.

With the retirement at the end of this month of the Alnwick auctioneer Ian Robertson, Newcastle-upon-Tyne auctioneers Anderson & Garland are to assume control of the 40-year-old business.

TURNOVER and the number of fine art items offered at auction globally have fallen dramatically this year, according to two of the leading market trackers. The British-based Art Sales Index, who record hammer prices of pictures over £250/$400, sculpture and miniatures over £1000/$2000 and photographs and prints over £2000/$3000, have noted an 11.5 per cent drop in the number of lots offered from the 2001/2002 season to that of 2002/2003.

International Fine Art Expositions are to repackage its portfolio of Palm Beach art and antiques fairs as the events move to a new venue for 2004. In an effort to distinguish the top-tier fairs from the proliferation of ‘tailgate’ events in southern Florida – and allowing IFAE’s vice-president Lorenzo Rudolf to place his own stamp on the fairs pioneered by David Lester – the three events held this year in a marquee will become two next year at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Laure de Beauvau-Craon has announced that she will step down as chief executive of Sotheby’s France at the end of the year. She has held the post since 1991 and will be remembered for successfully lobbying the European Commission to bring about the abolition of the domestic auction monopoly of France’s commissaires-priseurs.

North Yorkshire auctioneers Tennants, who bought the Heathcote Ball name earlier this year, are to open a consignment office in Leicester this month but have no plans to hold auctions in the Midlands.

DECO continues to be very much the field in favour and, while it is making its presence felt at fairs at all levels, you will be hard-pressed to find a location more in sympathy with the style than Eltham Palace in South London.

FIRST out of the pack of September quality fairs is the oldest, The Chelsea Antiques Fair, which was founded in 1950 and runs again at Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3 from September 17 to 22.

OF all the imminent fairs, the one for which market omens are most favourable is the popular 20/21 British Art Fair, which will take place at the Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London W8 from September 17 to 21. While the art and antiques industry has been reeling in recent years, one area which has consistently bucked the trend is 20th century British art.

Costume Jewellery by Judith Miller with John Wainwright, published by Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 1405300140 £20hb (pub. date October 2).

CHISWICK-based dealer in studio pottery, Joanna Bird, presents her seventh annual exhibition at Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, London W1, from September 15 to 20, centred on the work of eight leading contemporary potters, Elizabeth Fritsch, Julian Stair, Edward Hughes, William Plumptre, John Spearman, Daniel Fisher, Michael O’ Brien and Danlami Aliyu.

LINCOLNSHIRE-based Grosvenor Exhibitions are professional organisers in a number of fields, not just antiques, but they are upping their antiques profile with a new Midlands fair scheduled for December.

ONE thing you cannot accuse DMG Antiques Fairs of is resting on their laurels. Their Newark International Antiques & Collectors Fair, held six times a year at the Nottinghamshire showground, is Europe’s biggest.

Matthew Boulton: Ormolu by Nicholas Goodison, published by Christie’s and available from the Antique Collectors’Club. Tel: 01394 389950 ISBN 0903432706 £85hb

Pre-Raphaelite Art in the Victoria & Albert Museum, by Suzane Fagence Cooper, published by V&A Publications. ISBN 1851773932 £30hb (pub. Oct 9).

FAIRS dominate the diary this week as they do the current trade scene generally, but that it not to say dealers have forgotten the arts of self-promotion. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of his business, J. Collins & Sons, Devonshire dealer John Biggs is best known as a period furniture dealer. But he always carries a good stock of paintings and holds his 47th picture show at his showrooms at 28 High Street, Bideford this month.