Auctions

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period November 2-8, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

Not many new faces at salerooms can include among their experience “a trained horse whisperer”.

A mid-19th century scrimshaw carved whalebone walking cane sold for a house record of £17,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at East Bristol Auctions on November 9.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

In business for 20-plus years, former Sotheby’s auctioneer Catherine Southon, founder of the eponymous auction house and antiques TV presenter, takes nothing for granted.

It’s a new name and a new start for a Jedburgh saleroom this autumn.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

“I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele,” Siegfried Sassoon famously wrote of the First World War carnage which ended in November 1917.

A collection of market-fresh pictures with a distinctive Surrealist streak found favour with buyers at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) in Dorset.

Fitzroy Square to the north of central London was a key location in early 20th century British art. Virginia Woolf lived here for several years, a few doors down from Bloomsbury Group artist Duncan Grant, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler also had a studio.

“No one can rival Thomas Cole for engraving in the 19th century,” said director Jamie South after this exhibition-quality carriage clock sold for £26,000 (plus 20% premium) at Gardiner Houlgate in Horsham, Bath, on October 25. It went to an American buyer towards the top end of the estimate.

A sale devoted to pieces by French designers and held in the French capital proved to be a winning formula for Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) latest auction in this category on October 31.

British and Irish watercolours piqued the interest of bidders at Tennants’ (18.5% buyer’s premium) Country House sale in Leyburn on October 14.

Forum Auctions has expanded its modern and contemporary prints and editions department with two new appointments.

This archetypal still-life by Cecil Kennedy (1905-97) topped Halls’ (20% buyer’s premium) £300,000 auction on October 18.

A Nobel prize-winner’s gold medal awarded to a British scientist is to go under the hammer in Hollywood as part of Julien’s Auctions sale on November 17.

A newly discovered, hitherto unpublished painting by the French master Sebastien Bourdon is coming up for auction in Marseille at Maison R&C on November 16.

Bonhams capitalised on the strong market for classical Chinese furniture to set the two highest prices of the London Asian art auction series.

A 700-lot sale devoted entirely to one single-owner collection of comic book character artefacts is to be offered on November 18 by Milestone Auctions of Willoughby, Ohio.