Auctioneers

With the Chinese economy expanding at an unprecedented rate, and Chinese tourists becoming increasingly numerous in Europe, China Trade paintings are an area of the art market that might prove a cannier investment than most.

QUALITY, rarity, condition, provenance and fashion all have a bearing on auction prices, but perhaps the most difficult criterion for any specialist to value is the appeal of an object’s quirkiness.

OF the 830 lots offered in Fieldings (12.5% buyer's premium) February 28 sale, a painting provided the highest price but a chair the biggest surprise.

THE gulf in value between fully authenticated pictures and those with mere attributions was clearly in evidence on March 4 when this 18th century Irish School landscape, right, came up for sale at the Amersham Auction Rooms in Buckinghamshire.

THE new money-laundering laws appear inadvertently to have created a problem for the coin trade.

JEAN-BAPTISTE de Proyart, vice president of Sotheby’s France, is to leave the company this summer to work as an independent art advisor in books and manuscripts, based in Paris. He joined Sotheby’s in 1993 and, as head of books and manuscripts in France, organised several sales since the firm were allowed to sell in Paris in 2001.

A HIGH Court judge has retired to consider his ruling in a case that could revolutionise the terms under which auctioneers do business.

THIS weekend (April 17-18) Northumberland auctioneer Jim Railton will sell the residual contents of the late Dowager Countess of Tankerville’s estate house in Chillingham, pictured right.

The Death of Munrow, depicting the attack by a tiger on a certain Mr Munroe in 1793 when he was out on a hunting party on Saugar Island in West Bengal, is one of the most dramatic and celebrated subjects to be recorded in Staffordshire earthenware. As a result it usually commands a high price when it comes up for sale at auction but few could have predicted the $130,000 (£74,285) (plus buyer’s premium) realised for the example that appeared at Sotheby’s New York last week.

ONE of the hottest Modern British names in the last few years, has been Winifrid Nicholson (1893-1981), whose half-length portrait of her husband Ben Nicholson made a record £100,000 at Lawrence’s, Crewkerne in January 2002.

WITH sales of standard furniture chugging along – but at least finding buyers – Gildings (12.5% buyer's premium) of Market Harborough, in common with many in the provinces, looked to ceramics and clocks to provide the day’s highlights at their March 16 sale.

With a dozen works by the artist currently on show at Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, Sussex auctioneers John Nicholson (15% buyer’s premium) could hardly have picked a better time to offer a watercolour by George Price Boyce (1826-97) than at their March 17 sale in Fernhurst.

From the standpoint of manufacturing history, dispersals of any factory collection are always tinged with sadness.

NOT all the market resides in a state of stagnation.

THE strength of this Bearne’s (15/10% buyer's premium) March 2 & 3 Devon outing lay in the 72-lot furniture section, although the fairly routine ceramic selection was also notable for a high take-up by lot and some healthy prices. What turned out to be the two star furniture lots were given cautious catalogue entries and estimates which reflected a knowledge of the current wariness among specialists about the numbers of altered, or overly restored, pieces of furniture peppering the market.

A 100-LOT collection of Meissen, Derby and Cont-inental porcelain figures, together with some furniture and works of art from a local Thanet private vendor, formed the backbone of Canterbury Auction Galleries (15% buyer's premium) February 24 outing which attracted a large number of private buyers, many of whom secured the top ceramic lots.

EVERYONE is aware of how rich a thin stratum of Russians have become in the post-glasnost years. The buying power of Russia’s new rich was amply in evidence on March 23 at Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) Bond Street when the spectacular 3ft 1in x 5ft 8 3/4in (94cm x 1.74m) canvas, Nero’s Torches, by Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902) sold at £260,000 at an otherwise fairly predictable 19th Century Paintings sale.

BOUGHT for a few pounds at a Surrey church bazaar within the last five years, this James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) pen and ink drawing, right, made a tidy profit for its vendor when it fetched a surprise £26,000 at Rosebery’s (15% buyer’s premium) Quarterly Select Auction in West Norwood, South East London.

THE Fine Art Auction Group are to adopt the Dreweatt Neate Fine Art name for their full network of regional salerooms. The move follows the addition of the Donnington Priory company to the group’s portfolio in November last year.

PARIS auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche has been given an eight-month suspended jail sentence, and fined €100,000, after a Paris court found him guilty of fraud.