Turner sketch goes into Gloucestershire auction
The Castle at Tancarville, Normandy is one of five known gouache and watercolour sketches made by Turner of the landscape in 1832 – others forming part of the 1856 Turner Bequest in Tate Britain. Worked on a sheet of 6½ x 5½in (17 x 14cm) blue paper (now trimmed), it depicts the ruined castle on its rocky platform overlooking the Seine with a crowd to the foreground.
The drawings later formed the basis of two engraved illustrations for the 1834 volume Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine, later reissued as Rivers of France.
The sketch comes from the family of Humphrey Neame, a Harley Street eye doctor, who discussed it in a letter dated February 19, 1951 from Charles Gerald Agnew.
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Antique firearm dealer convicted
The conviction of a firearms dealer from Gloucestershire has highlighted the problem of antique weapons being adapted for criminal use.
Dealer Paul Edmunds, 66, was found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court of supplying weapons and handcrafted bullets to criminals.
He was first arrested at his home in 2015, where he had armouries and made bullets to fit antique weapons which were then sold on.
The court heard how weapons supplied by him have been found at more than 100 crime scenes including gangland shootings.
Edmunds made bullets for use in vintage weapons such as Smith & Wesson pistols from the US and 19th-century French and Russian guns. He also imported prohibited 1950s Colt pistols from the US.
He pleaded guilty to exporting ammunition and has been remanded in custody until December 20 for sentencing.
Police concerns that antique weapons are being used in crime have grown in recent years.
The antique firearms trade is braced for the outcome of a new consultation on the legal definition of ‘antique firearm’. The Home Office last month launched a fresh consultation on the topic.
The legal definition is being reviewed as part of the provisions for the new Policing and Crime Act 2017.
Update on Fryer & Brown saleroom
Customers of now defunct auction house Fryer & Brown have been asked by former director Jane Brown to email itemretrieval@hotmail.com if they are still awaiting items consigned or bought at the Surrey firm, ATG has learned.
Fryer & Brown ceased trading in January 2017. More than a dozen former customers have joined forces to pursue the firm for their goods or money owed.
The group is led by Peter Reed who can be contacted on preedwecp@aol.com.
Man Ray muse photo is record sale
Man Ray’s photo 'Noire et Blanche' which sold for a premium-inclusive €2.25m at Christie’s on November 9. Image copyright: Christie's Images 2017.
Le Mois de la Photo in Paris celebrated the art of photography with the city’s annual fair Paris Photo at the Grand Palais from November 9-12 plus a string of accompanying photograph auctions.
Christie’s fielded two sales. A significant result came in the single-owner sale of photographs from the collection of Thomas Koerfer on November 9, when Man Ray’s famous image Noire et Blanche sold for a hammer price of €2.25m (or €2.68m/£2.3m/$3.1m including premium).
The price sets a new auction high for the photographer, beating the premium-inclusive $2.16m paid in Christie’s New York rooms in May for his Portrait of a Tearful Woman. It also set a new auction record for any photo sold in France, surpassing the €917,000 paid in 2011 in Vendôme for Gustave le Gray’s Bateaux quittant le port du Havre of 1856.
Noire et Blanche, a print from 1926, depicts Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray’s muse and lover, with an African mask. It was formerly in the collection of the couturier and art collector Jacques Doucet.
In Numbers
38
The number of days left for people to respond to the government’s ivory consultation, as of November 21.
A UK buyer is being sought for a Mae West lips sofa, by Salvador Dalí and Edward James. A temporary export bar was placed on it by the UK government in order to find a buyer to pay nearly £480,300 by February to match the price the current owner paid at auction. The sofa is one of a pair sold at Christie’s which had previously been in James’ former home in West Sussex. James, the late poet and artist, was a patron of the Surrealist movement.
