North America

AS recently as a decade ago, the Pennsylvanian Impressionists or New Hope School – perhaps the most recognisable group of painters to emerge from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) – remained a relatively untapped seam for ‘serious’ auctioneers of the Mid-Atlantic States.

Containing several hundred pencil drawings, a Spanish chemistry textbook used by Salvador Dali during his student days at the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid was sold for $12,000 (£6280) in a Sotheby’s New York sale of December 3.

THE US is not the only North American country notching up record totals for auctions of its own domestically-produced art. On November 25 at Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel, just a week before Sotheby’s achieved the first ever nine-figure total for a sale of American art, the Vancouver-based auctioneers Heffel Fine Art (15% buyer’s premium) held the highest-ever grossing sale of Fine Canadian Art.

AFTER 43 years, the annual Original Miami Beach Antique Show is a world attraction but, despite its longevity, it still rings the changes, as you will see at this year’s staging from January 20 to 24 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Drive.

The small group of Sir Isaac Newton’s manuscripts and papers offered by Sotheby’s New York on December 3 were not for the most part concerned with the work that will forever ensure his fame – although an autograph draft of a letter concerning the presentation of six copies of the 1726, third edition of the Principia to the Académie Royale des Sciences sold at $28,000 (£14,560).

A STUNNING early Ming dynasty dish has equalled the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of Chinese porcelain.

THE gap between the French and American art markets has dramatically widened in the past two years.

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has acquired a devotional panel of the Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna (active by 1278; died 1319) from the Stoclet family in Brussels.

THE market for Contemporary art maintained its seemingly unstoppable momentum in New York last week.

NERVES in New York’s art market, just like those in the New York stock market, were settled by the swift resolution of the US presidential election.

IN the competitive world of domestic tablewares, the name of Spode has remained among the very best since production started c.1770.

A RARE bird from the English provinces has been spotted in Canada.

TWO former Sotheby’s executives and a leading wine retailer have announced the formation of a new Chicago-based firm specialising in the sale of fine wine by retail and auction.

JUST a week after they dismantle the stands of their art and design fair, London-based organisers Brian and Anna Haughton return to the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th St, New York for their 16th annual International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show.

JUST before the onslaught of numismatic sales in London, there have been a number of interesting dispersals abroad.

THREE leading international dealers in antique needlework are getting together in New York later this month for a special selling exhibition – The Admirable Art of the Needle: Samplers & Embroideries 1650-1850.

HIGH spot of the Asian works of art section of Skinners’ July 17 sale in Boston was an $85,000 (£49,945) bid on a pair of 16th/17th century, cane-seated hardwood ‘Official’s Hat’ chairs from the collection of Professor James Hightower. In a post-sale announcement, Skinners Asian specialist described them as “quintessential examples... and undoubtedly the finest pair of hat chairs to have come on the market in decades”.

OCTOBER is the busiest month in New York for London-based organisers Brian and Anna Haughton who, as Haughton Fairs, brought quality, vetted fairs to Manhattan in 1989 with the launch of their International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show at The Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue.

COMMISSIONED in 1908 by the Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Co., Mists of Yellowstone, one of many pictures of what is now the Yellowstone National Park region painted by Thomas Moran, nearly doubled the previous saleroom best for the artist on July 29. It made $4.4m (£2.42m) in the grand ballroom of the Silver Legacy Resort & Casino in Reno, Nevada – where Coeur d’Alene Art hold an annual auction, the big event of the year for well-heeled lovers of Western art.

AN Americana sale held by Eldreds of East Dennis on August 5-6 included a number of works by Ralph Eugene Cahoon Jr. (1910-82), a Cape Cod artist for whom mermaids and sailors, lighthouses and balloons were key themes, and the picture top right, a late addition to the catalogue, proved one of the Massachusetts sale’s greater successes, at $40,000 (£22,000).