Essex

Morris record takes the headlines but his pupil is also in demand at same sale.

The year after Cedric Morris painted his verdant Foxgloves in 1932, a severe drought cut through much of southern Britain. The parched soil and the hardship it brought were a source of artistic inspiration for those who painted the form and the character of the rural landscape.

London art dealer Philip Mould was the successful bidder for three works by Cedric Morris (1889-1982) sold in Essex last week. One set a new auction record for the artist plantsman.

Stansted Mountfitchet auction house Sworders is growing its sales programme and headcount with an increased focus on London.

Diaries, journals and letters kept by Lady Anne Cullum (1807-95) of Hardwick House, near Bury St Edmunds, sold for a total of around £8000 in a recent East Anglian auction.

The first tranche of a private collection of predominantly Far Eastern maps and charts sold for more than £500,000 at Reeman Dansie and included a house record.

Auction includes collection of Modernist works breaking away from south Asian tradition

Proceeds of painting by artist-plantsman Cedric Morris will benefit Benton End – the house where it was painted and home of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing

This Italian marble bust of an emperor, catalogued as 17th century after the antique, provided a moment of saleroom drama at Sworders’ Fine Interiors auction in Stansted on September 10.

Could these be the opera glasses used by Mary Lincoln on the night her husband was assassinated? Colchester auction house Reeman Dansie will offer them for sale on September 24-25 with a guide price of £10,000-20,000.

Purchased for £1 from a Hertfordshire charity shop earlier this year, a Qianlong famille rose wall vase will carry an estimate of over £50,000 at Sworders in the autumn.

An archive relating to a once famous Suffolk dynasty comes for sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on September 10-11. The diaries, journals and letters of Lady Ann Cullum (1807-75) of Hardwick House near Bury St Edmunds form part of a Fine Interiors sale.

Brought into the Epping saleroom of the Bonington auction house with a collection of Moorcroft, this Florentine Mannerist bronze sold for £150,000.

Private buying dominated as Essex saleroom Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) offered the selected contents of a Cotswold manor house.

The Flemish post-Impressionist Emile Claus (1849-1924) embraced the prevailing taste for plein-air painting when he moved to the village of Astene by the river Lys in 1883.

Pieces from the late 19th century, a vibrant but occasionally derided moment in the history of the decorative arts, provided many of the highlights to Sworders’ summer Fine Interiors sale in Stansted Montfitchet.