Art and antiques news from 2003

The Lewes auctioneers Gorringe’s (15% buyer’s premium) experienced one or two pleasant surprises in the third-day picture section of their September 9-11 sale. Alan Windsor’s Handbook of Modern British Painting and Printmaking 1900-1990 describes the Wakefield-born, Slade-trained Mark Senior (1862-1927) as an artist whose “early painting was influenced by Clausen whilst later work reflected the techniques of Steer, Whistler, Boudin and the Impressionists”.

The energetic organisers of ART COLOGNE, Koelnmesse, have beefed up their team with the appointment last week of Gérard Andrew Goodrow, 39, as fair director, a new post. He should be happily settled in by the end of October when the next ART COLOGNE opens.

Online auctioneer eBay will create up to 800 new jobs in Dublin as they expand their European operations. The San Francisco-based company will locate the European headquarters for their PayPal Internet payment unit in west Dublin and will also open a second European customer support centre.

Edinburgh-based auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull are set to expand out of Scotland, having made appointments in London, Devon and Newcastle. The bold move – claimed as a first for a Scottish auction house – comes close to the fifth birthday of an ambitious vision that has grown into a £5m business.

After 42 years as one of the American Midwest’s leading auction firms, Frank H. Boos Gallery have downsized operations, prompting a former employee to launch his own business in Detroit.

FLORIDA has a new quality fair with the launch next February of the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show. It will be held from February 13 to 17 in the newly built Palm Beach Convention Center at West Palm Beach and is intended to become an annual event.

The fire that destroyed three exhibition halls and two thirds of exhibits at the National Motorcycle Museum last week has led to the postponement of one antiques fair and the relocation of another.

A complete RUN of the nine Broons Books issued in the years 1939-59 was the runaway success story of the Comic Book Postal Auctions sale that ended on September 2, with prices for the first four Christmas collections of the adventures of the occupants of No. 10 Glebe Street – Paw, Maw, Grandpaw, Joe, Maggie, Hen, Horace, the twins, and the bairn, collectively known as ‘Scotland’s Happy Family’ – bringing four-figure bids.

Weller King will erect a marquee in the grounds of Dial Post House, Horsham on September 23 to sell period oak furniture and works of art belonging to the West Sussex dealer Alex Sloane. A regular on the quality fairs circuit since his shop in Robertsbridge, East Sussex closed in 1996, the vernacular furniture specialist is retiring from the antiques business to live in Spain.

The artist might have been unknown, the subject unconfirmed, but this unsigned 133/4 x 173/4in (35 x 45cm) Victorian oil, right, of figures on the deck of a yacht was nonetheless the most hotly contested lot at Stride & Son’s (15% buyer’s premium) August 29 sale in Chichester.

YOU might well detect a distinct whiff of testosterone in the air around Mayfair’s Bruton Street later this month when a selling exhibition Gentleman’s Relish: 200 Years of Machismo runs at the Shapero Gallery at No. 24 from September 24 to October 17.

THE Somerset auctioneersGreenslade Taylor Hunt were taking a bullish view about August sales. A month of “traditionally smaller sales and fewer buyers but not in Taunton” was the official line after a two-day event of more than 2100 lots on 28-29 August.

Deauville Auction’s saleroom success has incited other firms to try out the Normandy resort as a sales venue, something Augier is happy with insofar as they “bring in extra activity, which is good for the town” – and providing, he adds pointedly, that “they are quality sales”.

If the forthcoming 20/21 British Art Fair at the Commonwealth Institute proves as successful as many dealers are hoping, there will be no shortage of competition for this signed and inscribed Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) watercolour, right, Hull’s Mill, coming up for sale at the Stansted Mountfichet rooms of Sworders (15% buyer’s premium) on October 21.

Fashionably-clad women queuing to try on the new season’s must-haves is a common enough sight in any high street clothes shop, but in the late 18th century men gave as much thought to their appearance as the fairer sex.

LONDON organisers Brian and Anna Haughton long ago conquered the Manhattan fairs scene, first with their flagship International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, which celebrates its 15th anniversary next month, then with their specialist fine art and Asian art fairs.

Bailey, BADA and local firm all in action making September a month the town will remember: Well-used to antiques as they are, the citizens of Harrogate will be spoilt for choice this month with two major fairs in different parts of town, mercifully with a five-day gap between them.

Exhibitors at the 2003 Monaco Biennale are invariably reluctant to go into detail about sales and, of course, a lot of business is done in the weeks and months after the fair as a result of contacts made. But it was clear that not all participants at this year’s Biennale (August 1-17) had enjoyed the same level of activity.

On an April morning of this year, Guy Davis, book consultant to Bamfords of Derby, gave an interview on BBC Radio Derby in which he talked about a copy of the first Rupert annual of 1936 that was to be sold at auction later that same day.

Fred T. Jane is a turn-of-the-century artist who doesn’t make much of an impact in the sort of standard reference works that line the office walls of serious auctioneers and dealers.