International

The dust jacket is far from pristine, but this 1933 first of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is signed and inscribed by both its subject and her lifelong partner, the writer Gertrude Stein.

This little oil on canvas showing a seated lion watching the setting sun from the top of a rocky plateau is evocatively titled Les Deux Majestés and is a work by the 19th century Orientalist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904).

Representing just a fraction of the international art market and often overshadowed by the demand for 2D art, Irish sculpture has undergone a quieter recovery.

Tribal art is very much a strength of the Paris art market, with sales taking place throughout the year.

Black Rock Galleries in Greenwich, Connecticut received bids up to $388,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) for a bronze it believes is Buste de Saint Jean-Baptiste, a previously lost lifetime cast by Rodin.

This small-scale, 17th-18th century, Italian vanitas of a skull carved from Cararra marble measures 7½ x 9½in (19 x 24cm).

Was this the gun that John James Audubon (1785-1851) used to create the world’s most expensive natural history book?

While demand is encouraging, a scarcity of high-quality work is hitting the supply side

Eleven years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, fellow writer Walker Percy was the man who ensured that his only book, A Confederacy of Dunces, finally got into print.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.

Listing of auctions coming up in Australia.

“If I was to select just one lot we have sold this year,” says John Albrecht, managing director at Leonard Joel, “it would be the haunting, period photo of Australia’s infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, taken in 1874 after a boxing match.”

Leading New Zealand firm Webb’s – established by Auckland gallery owner Peter Webb in 1976 – became part of Mossgreen in October 2014. Two businessmen and art collectors from the city, Ewen Mackenzie-Bowie and Bruce Qin, rescued the saleroom earlier this year following the collapse of the parent company and a regular calendar of sales is now in operation from new premises in Mount Eden.

Presented to Captain William Lonsdale (1799-1864) in 1842 by the people of Melbourne in recognition of his services to the founding colony, the Lonsdale Silver Presentation has remained in his descendants’ care for 176 years.

After almost a decade of flatlining annual sales and the collapse of Mossgreen, Australia’s auctioneers are vocal about the improving market.

Since the first Festival of Music and the Arts took place in 1951, the annual Wexford Festival Opera in the south-east Irish town has specialised in neglected works and has become one of the world’s leading opera festivals.