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IT took 50 bids and half an hour to auction this RMB370m (£35m) scroll, by Qi Baishi (1864-1957) at Beijing's China Guardian on May 22 – the latest demonstration of the breadth of mainland demand for modern Chinese paintings by the country's most acclaimed artists.

THE Portable Antiquities Scheme has recorded a 36 per cent increase in finds since improving its database in 2010 and making it easier to register discoveries.

A THEFT of a rhino head from a museum in Surrey is thought to have been motivated by the hugely valuable trade in rhino horn.

THE man who oversaw the French Revolution's 'reign of terror' but who finally met his end at the guillotine himself, Maximilien de Robespierre, was back on the block again at the end of last month as Sotheby's auctioned an extraordinary cache of documents in Paris.

ED Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, has appointed London art dealer Lowell Libson as a member of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.

IT is symptomatic of the changes in the Poole pottery market that the joint top selling lot in a large specialist sale last month was a 1960s rimmed dish.

A house clearer has won a High Court battle to regain possession of a pair of medieval embroideries thought to be worth millions after a longstanding dispute with a fine art specialist.