Auctions

“I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele,” Siegfried Sassoon famously wrote of the First World War carnage which ended in November 1917.

A collection of market-fresh pictures with a distinctive Surrealist streak found favour with buyers at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) in Dorset.

Fitzroy Square to the north of central London was a key location in early 20th century British art. Virginia Woolf lived here for several years, a few doors down from Bloomsbury Group artist Duncan Grant, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler also had a studio.

“No one can rival Thomas Cole for engraving in the 19th century,” said director Jamie South after this exhibition-quality carriage clock sold for £26,000 (plus 20% premium) at Gardiner Houlgate in Horsham, Bath, on October 25. It went to an American buyer towards the top end of the estimate.

A sale devoted to pieces by French designers and held in the French capital proved to be a winning formula for Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) latest auction in this category on October 31.

British and Irish watercolours piqued the interest of bidders at Tennants’ (18.5% buyer’s premium) Country House sale in Leyburn on October 14.

Forum Auctions has expanded its modern and contemporary prints and editions department with two new appointments.

This archetypal still-life by Cecil Kennedy (1905-97) topped Halls’ (20% buyer’s premium) £300,000 auction on October 18.

A Nobel prize-winner’s gold medal awarded to a British scientist is to go under the hammer in Hollywood as part of Julien’s Auctions sale on November 17.

A newly discovered, hitherto unpublished painting by the French master Sebastien Bourdon is coming up for auction in Marseille at Maison R&C on November 16.

Bonhams capitalised on the strong market for classical Chinese furniture to set the two highest prices of the London Asian art auction series.

A 700-lot sale devoted entirely to one single-owner collection of comic book character artefacts is to be offered on November 18 by Milestone Auctions of Willoughby, Ohio.

Autumn has been the setting for so many specialist sales round the regions that an all-disciplines, quality sale such as that held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) at Exeter on October 3 was almost a rarity.

What expert James Opie described as “the most intriguing collection I have ever come across” provided Rochester auction house C&T (18% buyer’s premium) with its biggest statement yet in the toy soldiers market.

This collection of late Qing dynasty Chinese hair ornaments fashioned as bats, flowers and foliage and set with kingfisher feathers, coral, jade and pearls is part of a group of 30 lots from the collection of Evelyn Williams Medows Norie (1862-1915) which is on offer at Bruun Rasmussen on November 29.

The name on the frame was the name of the game at Charles Miller’s November 7 auction in west London where a “rather tired and dirty” sextant sold for £28,000.

A botanical collection formed over several decades by DF Allen of Washington DC and sold on October 26 by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was small in numbers but focused on the exceptional.