Sotheby's

SOTHEBY’S have launched a retail and online wine business based in New York.

LA Minotauromachie from 1935 is arguably the masterpiece of the Pablo Picasso's 2000 or so different printed works.

WITH the new auction season getting underway, the London houses have been rushing to announce their star lots as the treasures from aristocratic collections continue to emerge in the saleroom.

IT looks like a flying saucer, and to those viewing it on the monastery wall in Verona where it had hung since the Middle Ages, it can have had hardly less of an impact.

CHRISTIE’S have announced worldwide sales of £1.7bn ($2.57m) for the first half of 2010 – 46 per cent up on the same period for 2009.

Among a series of records for British watercolours posted during Sotheby's sale entitled An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection on July 14, the most spectacular price was the £2.1m bid for this striking view of the Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo by John Robert Cozens (1752-1797).

A DEBT-plagued university in Boston has entered into an agreement with Sotheby’s to lease rather than sell off works from its museum’s $350m art collection.

JUST one week after Christie’s held their series of London sales from the cellars, storehouses and attics of Althorp, ancestral home of the Spencer family, Sotheby’s announced that they are to hold an autumn auction of attic treasures from Chatsworth, the Derbyshire home of the Dukes of Devonshire.

AT 11 1/2 stone and 4ft 3in (1.3m) wide, it is big enough to bathe in. Baron Raby’s wine cistern was ordered from the workshops of goldsmith Philip Rollos in 1705 as part of his ambassadorial plate in his capacity as Ambassador Extraordinary to the King of Prussia in Berlin.

HAD it not been for the headline-grabbing and record-breaking J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the latest Old Master auctions in London would have seemed a bit flat.

THE latest Contemporary art sales in London were a little flatter than expected, but Modern British art generated a batch of stand-out prices.

THE latest Impressionist & Modern art auction series in London saw rising returns for the salerooms but buyers reacted unfavourably to heavy estimates on the most expensive works.

This jewelled and gold mounted hardstone model of a turkey by Fabergé was among the highlights of Christie's Russian art sale in London on June 8.

SETTING the highest price ever seen at auction for Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), this lifesize sculpture of a mother and child, overshot its £60,000-80,000 estimate at Sotheby's latest sale of Modern British art in London before being knocked down to a private buyer at £120,000.

SOTHEBY’S first quarter results have been boosted by February’s healthy Contemporary and Impressionist sales in London, showing the company on a decisive upward curve after last year’s slump in revenues.

THE return of free-spending at the very top end of the art market continued apace at last week’s Impressionist and Modern sales series in New York as boom-time levels of bidding were seen on the blockbuster lots. For the second time this year, a new record was set for any artwork ever sold at auction.

AN American collector who sued Sotheby’s, alleging they concealed a financial interest in, and inflated the price of, a painting that he bought for almost $10m, has lost his case.

WHAT a difference a year can make. At the start of 2009 vendors shaken by the economic climate were reticent to consign to the major houses’ Hong Kong sales. But, a series of strong international Chinese sales during the latter half of last year restored market confidence.

A NEW auction record has been set for any painting by a Scottish Colourist after Tulips by Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935) sold for £520,000 at Sotheby's.

A LONG-lost array of paintings, prints, books and drawings owned by legendary art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) will be one of the talking points of the Paris summer season when it goes on sale at Sotheby’s on June 29.