Auctioneers

Plaudits were deserved in Paris on November 27 for Camille Claudel (1864-1943) when Artcurial’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) dedicated sale of 20 of the sculptor’s works were offered direct from her family.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships

Founded three years ago, the Whitchurch, Shropshire, firm of Trevanion & Dean (19% buyer’s premium) enjoyed its best sale so far when the 950 lots, ranging from Renaissance art to contemporary glass, totalled £250,000 on November 18.

Topping a recent sale at Boulton & Cooper in Malton, near York was this unusual Georgian miniature elbow chair with shell-carved knees and cresting rail.

Selling the contents of historic estates, especially those in the same family for several generations, will often throw up surprises.

A philosopher of mathematics, the human consciousness and language, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was described by his teacher Bertrand Russell as “the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived”.

The sluggish area of Victorian genre painting provided Brightwells (20% buyer’s premium) with one of its top-sellers at the November 8-9 sale in Leominster.

An Old Master portrait of an elderly Stuart woman took £13,200 at Mander Auctioneers (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Suffolk on November 18.

For a relatively brief period during the 19th century, small silver boxes decorated with British landmarks found an eager following among the honeymooners and day-trippers of Georgian and Victorian England.

George Orwell is the focus of a first look at a November 7 Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of books from The Library of an English Bibliophile, the seventh in that series to have been held since 2010. Orwell’s books made a significant contribution to the overall total.

A William Nicholson (1872-1949) portrait drew admirers at Thomas R Callan (17.5% buyer’s premium) on November 19 as it was hammered down for £150,000.

Lee Young, Asian art specialist and international director at Lyon & Turnbull, is joining Duke’s of Dorchester in December. He will assume the role of managing director.