Oil painting

A new high for any work of art sold at auction came at Christie’s New York last night as Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ sold at $160m (£108.1m).

Old Master paintings rarely take centre stage over Modern, Impressionist or Contemporary art these days. Yet this most traditional of collecting disciplines remains the soul of TEFAF Maastricht, the umbilical cord to its genesis as the Pictura fair.

Five works by Claude Monet helped Sotheby’s set a new high for a London auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art last night.

This version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) celebrated painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ sold for $4.5m (£3.1m) at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in New York yesterday. It was an oil sketch with quite a backstory.

The buyer of £25.5m worth of artworks left on a train in Italy faces a legal claim from the heir of the man from whom they were stolen in 1970.

As part of Old Master Week in New York, Sotheby’s will sell paintings assembled by J.E. Safra on January 29.

Personal effects of Sir Winston Churchill, including the morocco dispatch box pictured here, were among the highlights of Sotheby’s highly publicised estate sale of his youngest child, the late Mary Soames.

The outstanding lot of the latest Old Master auction series in London, ‘Rome, from Mount Aventine’ by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), was knocked down at £27m at Sotheby’s evening sale, setting a record price for the artist.

New York has witnessed some spectacular auction prices of late and another came last week as ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1’ by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was knocked down at $39.5m (£26.3m) at Sotheby’s American art sale.

The opening salvos have been fired in the court case centred on the version of Caravaggio’s ‘The Card Sharps’ which sold at Sotheby’s in 2006.

Paintings and objects from the estate of the late Mary Soames, the youngest daughter of Sir Winston Churchill, are to be sold at Sotheby’s in London.

This huge installation created using more than 40 gallons of oil paints will be the centrepiece of the first exhibition to mark the launch of shows by visiting artists to The Garden Rooms at Tennants.

Still Life, Vase with Daisies, painted by Vincent van Gogh at the home of his physician Paul Gachet just weeks before he died, carries an estimate of $30m-50m at Sotheby’s New York on November 4. It will be on view in London from October 12-18.

Earlier this month, 100 years to the day since the outbreak of the First World War, Sandham Memorial Chapel near Newbury reopened to the public after restoration.

Twenty lots comprising works by Anglo-Italian artist Fortunino Matania will be offered at the upcoming fine art sale being held by Tennants of Leyburn, North Yorkshire.

While two of the top prices of the London auctions last week came for ancient sculptures – the £14m Old Kingdom Egyptian limestone statue at Christie’s and the £8.3m for the Roman marble of Aphrodite (c.41-54AD) at Sotheby’s – there was also a bumper run of Old Master and British picture sales.

The total from last week’s Contemporary art auctions in London may have been a far cry from the record New York series in May where $1.57bn (£975m) of art changed hands, but there was still plenty of action as the market continued on its current buoyant course.

One of Claude Monet’s paintings from his celebrated Water Lilies series led a slightly mixed round of Impressionist & Modern art auctions in London last week.

Consigned by the debt-ridden Delaware Museum of Art, Isabella and the Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was the top lot of Christie’s sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist art in London last week.

The earliest dated picture by the 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), one of only two works by the artist left in private hands, will be a highlight of Christie’s Old Masters auction in London next month.