Impressionist and Modern Art

A LONG-lost array of paintings, prints, books and drawings owned by legendary art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) will be one of the talking points of the Paris summer season when it goes on sale at Sotheby’s on June 29.

FOLLOWING the confidential settlement made between The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation and the heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Picasso’s 1903 portrait of his friend Angel Fernandez de Soto will be offered for sale at Christie’s in London on June 23 with an estimate of £30-40m.

If the price paid for Alberto Giacometti's (1901-1966) sculpture L'Homme qui Marche I is anything to go by, then the art market is now striding out of recession. Selling for £58m (plus premium) at Sotheby's evening sale on February 3, it became the most expensive object ever sold at auction.

SERIOUS levels of demand emerged for works at the very top end of the art market as this month’s flagship Impressionist and Modern art auction series raised a combined hammer total of £225.8m, massively up on the £108.8m for the equivalent series last year.

THE London Jewish Museum of Art (the Ben Uri Gallery) have announced that they have purchased a crucifixion by Marc Chagall for what they believe to be a fraction of its real value at a Paris auction.

AN agreement over the disputed Blue Period Picasso painting The Absinthe Drinker may well lead to a clearer legal definition of what constitutes art sold under Nazi duress.

THE latest series of contemporary art auctions in New York provided some further evidence of confidence returning at the top end of the market.

HAS the top end of the art market bounced back? This was the opinion ventured by some commentators after the flagship sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York last week.

A DETAILED examination of Laura Knight's 1915 oil Carnaval by Christie's specialist Tom Rooth revealed the edge of not one but two stretched canvases.

A long-running complaint brought against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts by the owner of a work twice denied by their authentication board has been granted class action status.

THE readjustment taking place at the top end of the contemporary and modern art market was once again in evidence at the latest flagship London auction series.

Thin catalogues and thin demand for aggressively-priced works by Modern masters characterised the recent sales of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York.

DUTCH police have recovered eight paintings stolen from Robert Noortman’s gallery in Maastricht in 1987. The works, which included valuable works by Renoir and Pissarro, were traced to two small towns in the south of Holland after an alleged middleman in Dubai made an attempt to sell the paintings back to the insurers for a reported €5m (£4.5m).

A retired Massachusetts lawyer found guilty of involvement in a major art theft that extends back three decades has been sentenced to seven years in a Federal prison.

A FAMILY feud has led to yet another cancellation of the sale of 63 works of art by Oskar Schlemmer, one of the central figures of the Bauhaus.

Following the sometimes painful results of last week's Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York, there can now be little doubt that the worldwide financial distress is undermining demand for trophy paintings and sculpture. All sales missed their low estimates by some margin.

MEDIA interest in the Pietro Psaier controversy saw members of the national press in attendance at John Nicholson’s Fernhurst rooms on September 24 for the sale of 235 artworks.

London’s flagship June Impressionist and Modern sales saw Christie’s and Sotheby’s notch up a premium-inclusive total of £298m between them in three days.

TWO very different scenes of cricket matches in progress sold recently at very different locations. The artists themselves could also hardly be more contrasting: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and L.S. Lowry (1887-1976).

Fears that New York’s flagship May sales might usher in a market meltdown were allayed last week as Sotheby’s and Christie’s posted solid results for Impressionist and Modern art.