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John Minton’s 1940 painting 'Landscape with Figures' is among the pieces included in Osborne Samuel’s exhibition 'The Romantic Impulse: British Neo-Romantic Artists at Home & Abroad 1935-1959'.

The flagship auctions of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art in New York last week showed a recovery after a difficult 2016.

“I think the secret to our success is that we now hold an art sale every four weeks.” A 90% sell-through rate from 400 lots was the latest bullish stat to come out of John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) monthly picture auctions, started this year by specialist Buffy Parker.

Finely bound sets featured in the high spots ofa third Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of modern literature from the Maurice Neville library held on April 25.

An 18th century silver mechanical lifesize musical swan that catches a fish out of a crystal stream entranced Mark Twain when he saw it an exhibition in Paris in 1867.

Jenny Saville’s (b.1970) contorted and grotesquely fleshy female nudes are hot property on the contemporary art market.

Artwork produced for the much-loved ‘Ladybird’ books by the late John Berry (1920-2009) were offered by Tennants (18.5% buyer’s premium) on April 28.

The Cubist-inspired oils of Manchester artist Geoffrey Key (b.1941) regularly feature at Peter Wilson (20% buyer’s premium) in nearby Nantwich.

Containing over 150pp of notes and fragmentary drafts for two of her novels and a play, an autograph notebook used by Agatha Christie while in Baghdad around 1948 – perhaps while travelling with her husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan – sold for $15,000 (£11,625) in a Swann Auction Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 4.

News as reported from the ATG Archive...

A rather shabby portrait of an unknown woman sparked a bidding battle at W&H Peacock (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Bedford on May 5.