Auctioneers

Pictured right is the highlight of what turned out to be London’s Asia Week’s most successful auction.

THE received wisdom of the art market tells us that heavily restored paintings attract little demand from the trade at auction. But sometimes a subject is just too commercial for dealers to pass by, such as this Arthur Wardle (1864-1947) canvas, right, of four terrier puppies, Mischief in Quadruplet, which came up for sale at the Nottingham rooms of Mellors & Kirk (15% buyer’s premium) back on April 23.

CONTROVERSIAL artist Tracey Emin (b. 1963) might be outraged by public “sniggering” after the loss of her works in the Momart’s London warehouse fire, but the art world has lost much more than her infamous tent. To many, much more disconcerting is the loss of the large cache of major paintings by Patrick Heron, RA (1920-1999).

NO self-respecting specialist auction of marine paintings would be complete without at least one example from the brush of that most prolific and popular of late 19th century marine painters, Thomas Bush Hardy (1842-1897).

IN these time-strapped days of TV dinners and takeaways, grand dining is something of a rarity.

THE National Trust of Scotland are looking to the Scottish Executive to lead the effort to prevent the piecemeal sale of the contents of Dumfries House, home to one of Scotland’s most celebrated collections of 18th century furniture.

THE expansion of Bloomsbury Auctions continues apace with the announcement that they are moving into the chess and games market.

THE large sums of money rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia collectors are prepared to part with for a complete set of Beatles autographs inevitably means the market is peppered with fakes. The watertight provenance of an early Beatles extended play record, Twist and Shout, Parlophone, 1963, signed to the sleeve by the Fab Four, was key to its success at Biddle & Webb’s (15% buyer’s premium) 511-lot sale of toys and juvenilia in Birmingham on May 21.

AN 18-strong offering of Chinese jades at Woolley & Wallis' (17.5% buyer's premium) May 25-26 sale, including this pale green, reticulated vase and cover, right, had emerged from an old South-of-England collection consigned via a fine art agent in Chichester.

THIS punting scene by Whistler is one of some 3000 additional original and reproduction etchings and engravings, mostly full-page and many mounted and titled in ink as well as being mounted, where possible opposite the relevant text, that were to be found in an extra-illustrated 1880, third edition of Philip G. Hamerton’s Etchings & Etchers seen at Bonhams on May 6.

THE jacket was torn with loss and four of the five paintbox pictures had been partly coloured, but a copy of The New Adventures of Rupert, the 1936, first Rupert annual, was sold at £580 in a May 13 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt.

A MAY 11 sale held by Sotheby’s Olympia to dispose of property from the collections of the late Lord and Lady Menuhin included a collection of material by and about the American writer Willa Cather, who was a great friend of Marutha Menuhin, Yehudi’s mother, and a close friend to all the Menuhin children. She also wrote many letters to Marutha, but all of these were burned after her death, in accordance with the writer’s will.

ONE of the Thirty-One Original Etchings of Views of Norfolk by John Crome, a portfolio collection issued in 1821 by Freemans of Norwich, that sold for £3200 to an American collector in a Christie’s South Kensington sale of April 29.

TWO records of witchcraft trials in 17th century Lübeck were among the more successful lots in an April 19 sale held by Swanns of New York.

IN a general sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions on May 13, a copy of J.M. Richards’ High Street of 1938 that was signed on the front free endpaper by W.J. Bassett-Lowke, the proprietor of one of the shops illustrated in the work’s coloured litho illustrations by Eric Ravilious, was sold for £1150.

THE estimates were rather modest, but prices paid for some of the Biggles books offered as part of a May 21 sale held by Keys of Aylsham bode well for the Biggles collection that Dominic Winter are to sell on June 24. In Aylsham, Hamilton copies of The Black Peril of c.1936, in soiled blue cloth, and The Cruise of the Condor, an undated Ace series title with adverts for Spring 1937, were valued at around £40 apiece but sold for £1050 and £480 respectively.

AN undated medical volume offered as part of a May 8 antiques sale held by Fieldings of Stourbridge brought a bid of £430.

BOUND in half calf gilt and marbled boards, the three-vol., 1813 second edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that sold for £4600 in a May 21 sale held by John Bellman of Billingshurst bore the pencil initials H.D. for Horace Darwin (Charles Darwin’s son) and his bookplates were to be found in a copy of the 1818, four-vol. first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in a similar but less well-preserved binding that sold at £2500.

A POSTCARD sent by Joyce to the publisher Elkin Mathews sold for €12,000 (£8170) in a May 18 sale held by Mealy’s in Dublin.

AT the tail-end of a 500-lot sale of Russian pictures and other works of art held by Sotheby’s on May 26 was a small selection of photograph albums and books, two of which are illustrated and briefly described here.