Trio of saleroom movers and shakers
Cheffins has appointed Steve Collins as head of jewellery, silver and watches. His 30 years of experience includes Asprey, Garrard & Co and the London Assay Office.
Claire Rawle has left the Tamlyns saleroom in Bridgwater, Somerset, and will now be working as a freelance auctioneer and valuer.
Bishop & Miller has appointed Russell Cole as valuer and auctioneer. He joins the Stowmarket, Suffolk, auction house after working at Neal’s Auctioneers, Woodbridge, for 13 years.
Nagy to appeal Schiele pics ruling
London art dealer Richard Nagy is to appeal a court ruling over the ownership of two Egon Schiele pictures.
In a test case in international restitution law relating to Nazilooted artworks, a New York judge has ruled in favour of the heirs of the Austrian-Jewish entertainer and Holocaust victim Franz Friedrich Grunbaum, under the recently created Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act.
Schiele’s Woman in a Black Pinafore and Woman Hiding her Face were originally owned by Grunbaum. His art collection was seized by the Nazis after he was arrested in 1938 and he died in Dachau concentration camp in 1941.
Nagy had offered the artworks at a fair in New York in 2015. He and his lawyers argue Nagy has acquired legitimate title to the two drawings, stemming from a 1956 sale of some 50 Schiele works by Grunbaum’s sister-in-law to a gallery in Switzerland, and that the heirs’ rights to bring their claim had long since expired (statutory limitations).
Gramophone back after ATG appeal
The gramophone recovered after an ATG appeal.
A stolen gramophone will be returned to its owner after an Antiques Trade Gazette article alerted the buyer to the theft.
Dealer Mike Child sold the gramophone to a Japanese dealer who was storing it in London before shipping it home. But it was stolen from the lock-up garage in Paddington, north-west London, last month.
ATG alerted the trade on April 5 and a French dealer discovered he had bought the stolen record player.
Child described its discovery as “good news”. He said the dealer bought it at a Peterborough antiques fair on March 30, but when he returned to France he realised from the ATG report that it had been stolen.
“He has contacted the British police and is returning it to the police on Monday.”
Schaeffer collection on offer in Sydney
Edward John Poynter's 'A Corner of a Marketplace' is to be sold at Sotheby's.
Sotheby’s Australia will auction what it calls “the most significant collection of historical international art” offered in the country.
The 56 lots from the collection of John Schaeffer will be offered in Sydney on April 29.
The sale has an estimate of Aus$3.3m-4.4m, and features works by American, Belgian, British, Dutch, French and Italian artists of the mid to late 19th centuries. Edward John Poynter’s 1887 oil in spectacular neoclassical gilt frame titled A Corner of a Marketplace, depicting female models in a classical setting, is the potential best-seller at Aus$450,000-650,000.
Rubens oil sketch export bar in place
Head of an African Man Wearing a Turban by Rubens.
A rare 17th century depiction of an African man in Europe by Peter Paul Rubens has been placed under a temporary export bar in an attempt to keep it in the UK.
Head of an African Man Wearing a Turban could be exported unless a buyer can be found to match the asking price of £7,695,860. It has been in the UK for more than 100 years.
Rubens used the oil sketch in completing his portrayal of the wise man Balthazar in his 1609 Adoration of the Magi (now at the Museu del Prado in Madrid).
The oil sketch is painted on a list of accounts and Rubens’ use of paper rather than his preferred panel suggests that the picture is a record of an individual the artist met rather than a posed model.
A decision on the licence will be deferred until July 5, with a possible extension until January next year if a serious intention to raise funds is made.
In Numbers
1m+
The number of objects estimated by the Chinese government to have been looted by British and French forces from the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860. See Pick of the Week.
Most read
The most clicked-on stories for week April 5-11 on antiquestradegazette.com
1 Summer Palace bronze sells for £410,000 at Canterbury auction
2 Ivory ban – industry leaders react
3 Clear title confirmed for map collection sold at Chiswick Auctions
4 Sotheby’s re-thinks buyer’s premium fee at online-only auctions
5 Test case for Nazi looted artworks rules in favour of Holocaust victim’s heirs over Egon Schiele pictures
