Auctions

UK: FEW silhouettes are as desirable as those portraits of military officers produced by John Buncombe, and few of those are as valuable as the example illustrated here, which was the highlight of a residual 17-lot group of silhouettes from the Christie Collection, consigned to Christie’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) South Kensington sale on March 14.

UK: A Shining Palace, a 2ft 1/4in by 20in (62 x 51cm) oil on canvas view of Venice, signed by William John Leech (1881-1968) had been consigned to a sale conducted by Mainstreet Auctions in the village of Saint Boswells on March 4, 2000 where it was spotted by a runner from the south east of England.

UK: This early 18th century Welsh oak dresser had everything collectors of vernacular furniture want – clean unaltered condition, good colour, watertight provenance and extraordinary size.

UK: ONE of the most important drawings to appear at auction in London will be put up for sale at Christie's on July 4.

UK: IN THE primitive pantheon of vernacular furniture, the bread and cheese cupboard is an unusually specialised form, hence the immense interest from country furniture buffs in the oak example here which was consigned to the Colwyn Bay rooms of Rogers Jones and Co. for sale on February 29.

UK: THIS Linthorpe pre-Columbian-style pottery vessel, designed by Dr Christopher Dresser during his time as Art Superintendent at John Harrison's Middlesborough factory c.1879-81, was sold to London's New Century by Darlington auctioneer Thomas Watson & Son for £1500 (plus 15 per cent premium) on March 21.

UK: SOTHEBY'S are to sell a remarkably well-preserved and restored 18th century Spitalfields London town house and its contents, the home of the late Michael Gillingham, a well-known London art and antique dealer.

UK: A pair of gilt and cedarwood girandoles in the neoclassical manner, 5ft 9in high by 3ft wide (1.75m x 91cm), from the contents of Barnby Moor House, near Retford offered by Neales of Nottingham on February 24.

UK: THE Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland and England has been well documented both in commercial salerooms and academic exhibitions, and indeed the value of work designed by the likes of William Morris and Robert Lorimar has never been more popular.<b

AUSTRIA: THE ENTRY of Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government could have repercussions for the country's art market, warns Otto Hans Ressler, director of Austria's second-largest auction firm Wiener Kunst.

UK: The factors which make for a desirable cased fish are four-fold: the case (bowfronts are most popular), the label of a good taxidermist such as Cooper, condition and (as the joker in the pack) the beast itself.

UK: HAVING ascribed it to the Italian School of the 13th/14th century in their auction advertisement, Hy. Duke now believe that this 73/4 x 9in (20 x 23cm) oil on panel, right, is in fact the pinnacle – missing for 150 years – of the Madonna panel by Nardo Di Cione (1343-1366).

From a Ligurian Spring by Henry Herbert Lathangue (1859-1929) sold for £330,000 plus 15 per cent premium at Bearne’s Spring Seasonal Sale, Exeter on March 1.

UK: This pair of 8ft 2in (2.5m) high polished steel gates inset with Lalique glass segments were bid to £13,000 at Christie's South Kensington on February 9.

FRANCE: THE French auction law reform bill had its second reading in the Senate on February 23 and, according to National President Gérard Champin, “90 per cent of the text has now been approved”.

UK: EVERY so often a dealer will acquire an object of academic interest for relatively little money and put it into an auction to see how much it will make.

UK: A HIGHLY important painting by the early Italian master Cimabue (c.1240-1302) has been discovered by Sotheby's at Benacre Hall, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, home of the reclusive Sir John Gooch, 12th Bt., who died last year.

UK: While the art market has been quieter in the provincial salerooms since the New Year, an exception was provided by this oil on canvas View of Venice at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, which appeared at Lawrence's of Crewkerne on February 17.

This simple 91/2in (24cm) diameter pottery 'souvenir' plate, made in Llanelly c.1910 and decorated with Welsh folk heroine Mari Jones in the manner of the factory's most famous painter, Samuel Shufflebotham, sold to a Pembrokeshire collector at £1700 (plus 15 per cent premium) at the Carmarthen rooms of Peter Francis on January 25.

FRANCE: THANKS in part to the Chateau de Groussay sale staged jointly with Sotheby's, Poulain-Le Fur moved ahead of Piasa in 1999 to rank second in Paris with sales of Fr285m (£27.5m).