Oil, Acrylic paintings & Mixed Media

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

GENERATING a 25-minute bidding battle at Halls' sale in Shrewsbury on October 20, The Earl of Oxford's Roan or Bloody shouldered Arabian by John Wootton (c.1682-1764) set a new house record when it was finally knocked down to an anonymous UK buyer for £326,000.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

FOUND earlier this year in a house near Oxford where they were carrying out a probate valuation, auctioneers Mallams offered for sale this seminal painting Bravo! by C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) on October 13.

WHILE the sale of artworks and ephemera formerly owned by the Lehman Brothers bank had a strange attraction for souvenir hunters and contemporary art dealers, it was, perhaps more surprisingly, also of interest for enthusiasts of marine art.

THE fake Lowry at the centre of a £1m art fraud that landed Maurice “Lord Windsor” Taylor in jail is heading to auction to help pay his victims compensation. Once sold for £330,000, it is now valued at just £5,000-10,000.

WARTIME works by C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) are iconic, sought after and scarce – a potent commercial combination.

TECHNOLOGY is increasingly important in the art market but a pair of oils by the Anglo-Australian artist William Blamire Young (1862-1935), is believed to be the first significant work identified and consigned to auction through Christie’s iPhone application.

CHISWICK Auctions are set to sell one of the most important early paintings by the German Expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) to have come to market in recent years.

IN a confiscation hearing earlier this month, Maurice Taylor, the man jailed last March for three years for selling a fake Lowry painting, was warned that he faced a further ten years in prison unless he paid back almost £1.2m deemed to be the proceeds of fraud.

IN the early hours of August 6, a Henry Moore sketch and two oil paintings were stolen from Trinity House on the High Street in Broadway, south Worcestershire.

HAD it not been for the headline-grabbing and record-breaking J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the latest Old Master auctions in London would have seemed a bit flat.

POLICE in Surrey are seeking information about this man, pictured here, in connection with the theft of six paintings and Georgian writing desk worth total of around £25,000 from an antiques shop in Dorking earlier this month.

ANGELIC rosy-cheeked village girls were George Clausen’s (1852-1944) staple subject matter. During his time living in the Berkshire village of Cookham Dean, Clausen was particularly preoccupied with this idyllic rural subject matter and, from around 1889, he began to make a series of studies and paintings of a local child, Rose Grimsdale.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

CONSIDERED the finest work by the Italian Baroque master Domenico Zampieri, Il Domenichino (1581-1641), in private hands, this painting of St John the Evangelist has been saved for the nation. It has gone on display in the National Gallery's Baroque rooms.

SWISS-based animal philanthropist Jeanne Marchig is suing Christie's over the female portrait sold as '19th century German' at Christie's New York in 1998 for $19,500 but now called La Bella Principessa and claimed as a £100m work by Leonardo da Vinci.

A NEW auction record has been set for any painting by a Scottish Colourist after Tulips by Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935) sold for £520,000 at Sotheby's.

SPEAKING to ATG at the end of last week, London Old Master dealer Johnny Van Haeften still had not actually seen the monumental painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) for which he paid 6.1m euros (£5.65m) at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna on April 21.