Auctions

This superbly patinated Shona hardwood headrest sold for £23,000 at only the second auction at new Stowmarket saleroom Bishop & Miller.

Two rare brooches by Wiener Werkstätte founder Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) caused a sensation when they appeared in the recent Jugendstil and Design auction held at Kinsky in Vienna.

The Hôtel Drouot, the communal saleroom facility used by most Paris auctioneers, has welcomed the news that swathes of former staff members are to face charges relating to stolen property.

This striking 2ft 1½in (64.4cm) high Luba figural bowstand made c.1880 by the Warua Master was the runaway star of London’s high season sales.

Berlin online auction house Auctionata set a house record when this Chinese enamel, ivory-mounted and paste-set musical and automaton clock was sold for €2.8m (£2.15m), or €3.37m including premium.

A rare painting by Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) that had hung in the Prime Minister’s residence at 10, Downing Street for nine years led Christie’s evening sale of Old Master & British paintings in London.

Bonhams’ New Bond Street saleroom has won a RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architecture) 2015 National Award.

Sotheby’s evening sale of Old Master and British paintings was led by Lucas Cranach the Elder’s La Bocca della Verità (The Mouth of Truth) which made a major auction record when it was knocked down at £8.2m.

Only a year before the centenary of the Easter Rising, a powerful letter by the Anglo-Irish diplomat and Irish nationalist Roger David Casement (1864-1916) has surfaced in South Africa.

The latest series of Contemporary art auctions in London posted a bumper total despite the failure of some big-ticket lots.

An oil on panel by Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945), an Austrian artist prominent in the Vienna Secession group of painters, drew international bidding at Toovey’s of Washington, West Sussex.

Members of French dealers’ association the Syndicat National des Antiquaires have voted to make the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris an annual event.

Last week in London, it was hard to know where to be or look as, alongside the major Impressionist and Modern art auctions, ‘Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair’ and ‘Masterpiece London’ at the Royal Hospital Chelsea coincided for the first time.

A group of restituted paintings were among the highlights of a robust series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in London.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s have well-established specialist departments for brokering deals on sale of Nazi-looted works returned to rightful heirs. Over the last decade some major pieces of Impressionist and Modern art have come to auction as a result of restitution settlements.

Christie’s has agreed to withdraw seven pictures, including two by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, from its July 9 and 10 sales after owners the Alfred Beit Foundation asked to postpone their sale.

“The ivory ban has been a right old dampener on the market as a whole but after taking time to consider its implications, collectors are coming back.”

A fine 1875 vintage… never opened… so what did this bottle of wine sell for?

A couple of recently restituted works of art drew prolonged bidding at Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art in London including Gustav Klimt's (1862-1918) portrait of Gertrud Loew which was the top lot of the night at £22m.

In the 1984 book ‘The Late Paintings and Drawings of John Constable’ by Graham Reynolds, a pencil drawing of the back and shoulders of the artist’s wife Mrs Maria Constable (nee Bicknell) is described as ‘whereabouts unknown’.