News

RIGHT: despite the occasionally negative press the antiques trade has received in recent weeks a media circus arrived at Sotheby’s on July 7 to watch the Bond Street auctioneers sell Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, a newly-acknowledged picture by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75).

IN its latest published results, Partridge have recorded a significant fall in both turnover and profits citing again the very difficult trading conditions.

ROUNDING off the European furniture, carpets and works of art sale at Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15 was a 78-lot collection of hall stands, mostly made in cast iron.

AT Scarborough Perry Fine Arts' (15% buyer's premium) June 24-25 sale, auctioneer Stephen Perry, who had given a distressed Regency painted settee sofa a modest pre-sale estimate of £400, admitted ruefully after seeing it go for ten times that amount: “I can value furniture in general but I find it difficult to value interior decorator’s pieces.”

THOMAS Rowlandson’s (1756-1827) watercolour Place des Victoires, Paris (estimated £60,000-80,000) failed to find a buyer when offered at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 1.

FOR 71 of his 84 years Harry Davis (1885-1969) worked as a decorator at the Royal Worcester factory, ultimately rising to the post of foreman painter. He painted a wide variety of subjects, but is best known for his sheep-decorated landscapes, all produced in the first quarter of the 20th century.

SINCE 1986 Christopher Gange has been a dealer in 20th Century British Art at his Katharine House Gallery at The Parade, Marlborough, Wiltshire, but for the month of July, in a new departure, he is holding an important selling exhibition of British Studio Pottery, formerly part of his private collection.