Auctions

Sotheby’s From Earth To Fire sale in Bond Street on November 1 was topped by a kunstkammer object with a Rothschild provenance.

The doors have closed on what could be the final edition of the 'Winter Art & Antiques Fair Olympia' after almost three decades.

Bonhams’ Important Design sale in Bond Street on October 25 included this George III mahogany hall settee in the manner of William and John Linnell. Estimated at £8000- 12,000, it sold at £140,000 (plus premium), writes Roland Arkell.

The value of ‘Outsider’ art continues to grow following the dispersal of one of the UK’s largest collections at Anderson & Garland (25% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period October 26-November 1, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Dated by the Edinburgh auctioneers to c.1815-17, a group of watercolours made on a voyage to the Middle and Far East was bid to a far higher than expected £13,000 in a 650-lot Lyon & Turnbull (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale of October 11.

Offered at a wider-ranging, paintings and decorative arts sale at Dreweatts (24% buyer’s premium), this Pilkington’s Royal Lancastrian lustre vase, below, would have stood out at a post-1860s design sale.

The October 17 Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale focused largely on early printed medical, scientific and travel books but also included, at $24,000 (£18,180), a first edition in Greek of the works of Herodotus.

With sales of post-1860 design a seasonal fixture round the country, an argument could be made for Scottish auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) having a geographical edge.

A brace of unrecorded pastels by celebrated Scottish Colourist SJ Peploe (1871-1935) sold strongly at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) in Crewkerne.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Stourbridge auctioneer Will Farmer held the first of his biannual Decades of Design sales at Fieldings (17.5% buyer’s premium) 12 years ago and rather wishes he had copyrighted the phrase – now almost a generic term for post-1860 dec arts sales.

Dating from 1812, this pair of terrestrial and celestial library globes of 12in (31cm) diameter was made by the well-known London firm of John & William Cary.

Alongside its usual biannual sewing sale, Warwick auction house Bleasdales will offer art and antiques from the estate of a British noble family.

Artcurial’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) auction focus on Charlotte Perriand, the celebrated 20th century French designer and a current hot ticket in the design market, took the form of a select sale of just 20 lots chosen to showcase her strengths and versatility.

Masters of Design are very much in the spotlight in Paris at the moment. A week after Artcurial’s Charlotte Perriand sortie on October 31, Sotheby’s Paris (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was mounting its traditional autumn sale devoted to major works from the Art Nouveau, Art Deco, post-war and modern design periods.

Figuring why a specific lot did unexpectedly well is part and parcel of reviewing auctions but this oil on board lunette of a pastoral idyll below is more of a challenge than most.

Published by Ackermann in 1819 in its ‘Repository of the Arts’ journal, Four & Twenty Hobby-Horses All of a Row is an amusing coloured aquatint, accompanied by verses (by one L Harrison) that begin “Hobby’s the word, and onward sliding, All London Town is set a-riding:”.

'A Dawn', a 1914 picture by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in his trademark Vorticist style has been consigned to Sotheby's from a private source.

This evening village scene by the landscape painter James Hamilton Hay (1874- 1916) drew multiple bids at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) in Exeter on October 3.