News

THE Staithes Group, the band of artists who made the North Yorkshire fishing village their home before some moved to the South West and Newlyn, are the subject of an impressive exhibition put together by Cumbrian dealer Peter Haworth (Tel: 015395 62352).

It was standing room only at Sotheby’s Bond Street on February 26 when the auctioneers sold the David Sylvester collection. In a room packed with dealers, collectors and friends of the late art critic, plus a phalanx of Sotheby’s staff manning a bank of telephones, the auctioneers offered 149 lots of paintings, drawings, sculpture, tribal art and antiquities, and as lot after lot outstripped the estimates, it was clear that their £1m projection was going to be dramatically exceeded.

HOLLAND: IN honour of the Netherlands’ long tradition of landscapes and town scenes Christie’s Amsterdam (buyer’s premium 20.825 per cent) had a topographical theme to its pictures sale on January 22.

BELGIUM: Antwerp’s four main auction-houses have announced plans to co-ordinate their sales and viewings for the first time.

FAIRS are among the most contentious, gossip-ridden and difficult-to-read aspects of the whole antiques business. But while organisers’ rivalry can often verge on the psychotic, there is one thing they all agree about, and that is the status of The European Fine Art Fair at Maastricht.

THE relative strength of Old Master paintings in comparison to other sectors of the market has been noted at a number of recent auctions, but this new-found strength, it seems, is not just restricted to top-end sales in London and New York.

The second Detling fair of the year (February 23-24) indicates that the trade is not being put off by the Kent Act.