Auctions

As the battle for the ‘middle market’ heats up, the London auction scene today offers visitors a wider choice of items to buy and more places to bid for them.

Two studies by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones for his 1868 oil Hymenaeus will soon be reunited with the finished painting.

A Chinese parcel gilt bronze censer, that was being used to hold tennis balls when first seen by valuers last year, has sold at auction in Switzerland for close to £3.3m.

A pre-press version of a key map of colonial America emerged for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on June 6. Carrying an estimate of $30,000-50,000, it sold at $100,000/£76,900 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) – a sum that reflected its extraordinary provenance.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales at £1500 or under, including an oil painting by one of the founding members of The London Group.

Inscribed by Winston Churchill “…For Mrs Johnston in these great days”, a 1941 (second) edition of 'Into Battle', the first of a number of collections of his wartime speeches to be published, was part of a lot that sold for a higher than predicted £3000 in a Surrey sale.

Folk art (or art populaire as it is known in France) has gained an increased following over the years.

A consignment of furniture from the medieval Eastington Hall, Worcestershire, boosted Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) latest sale in Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 18-29, 2019.

The sale of a remarkable gramophone collection two years ago at the Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium), in which an EMG gramophone took £6500, prompted the consignment of another large collection to the June 4 sale at the Cheltenham rooms.

Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.

More of a curiosity than a clock but a decorator’s dream, a life-size caricature of a smiling Chinese man clutching a willow-pattern plate with gilt dragon hands emerged in the Ayr rooms of Thomas R Callan (17.5% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period June 6-12, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Two astronomical works dating from the 17th century were among the more successful works in a recent German auction.