Art and antiques news from 2015

Christie’s have announced major changes to their antiquities sales calendar in London and New York.

“There are 12 symbols in the Chinese language for the word fake – and each means something slightly different”.

When two academics spotted a work on the stand of the Lyons dealer Galerie Michel Descours on the opening night of the dedicated Old Masters fair Paris Tableau last week, they immediately felt it was a work that should be in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon.

A lifeline has been thrown to the 60 dealers at the Gloucester Antiques Centre on Gloucester Quays which closed earlier this month with six weeks’ notice given to quit.

The large sums of money changing hands at the top end of the Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art market was underlined at the latest auctions in New York.

Christie’s latest cross-category sale entitled The Artist’s Muse set the second highest ever auction price for a work of art when Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Reclining nude) sold at $152m (£104.8m).

A new auction record came for American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) when 'Nurse' was knocked down at $85m (£58.6m) at Christie’s cross-category sale entitled The Artist’s Muse earlier this week.

Following a long legal battle, London dealer Joost van den Bergh has successfully overturned a controversial customs decision to seize three rare 17th century ivories.

Police are appealing for help from the antiques trade to trace two men captured on CCTV at the scene of a watches burglary in London.

The Gloucester Antiques Centre has been saved by a local property developer after the 90 dealers at the centre were given six-weeks notice by their landlords the Peel Group to quit the three-storey premises on Gloucester Quays.

Welsh auctioneers Peter Francis set a new house record when this 8in (19cm) celadon glazed vase sold via the-saleroom.com to a bidder from mainland China for £114,500.

The hefty guarantee paid out by Sotheby’s to secure the Alfred Taubman collection meant the stakes were running high for the first and most financially crucial tranche of the four-part auction staged at Sotheby’s New York.

Police are investigating the theft of a distinctive painting from a house in the Old Town, Hastings.

Many who viewed a Barkentin and Krall chalice at JS Auctions in Bodicote, Oxfordshire will have hoped to win it close to its £300-500 estimate.

Colnaghi, the venerable London Old Master dealership, is to merge with art dealers Coll & Cortés (London and Madrid).

The British Antique Dealers’ Association has sold its Knightbridge headquarters for a “multi-million pound sum” as it continues to evolve into a proactive 21st century trade association.

As suggested by an inscription to the socle reading ‘Gallé, Expo 1900’, this ovoid pedestal vase offered by Hansons of Etwall in Derbyshire had been created in the studios of Emile Gallé (1846-1904) for the ‘Exposition Universelle de Paris’ in 1900.

Online auction site Paddle8, who recently took space in Mayfair, have secured $34m in new funding.

The three founders of ‘Antiques Young Guns’, Gail McLeod, Mark Hill and George Johnson, are to hand the running of the organisation to its members.

A Rembrandt portrait sold in a £35m private sale negotiated by Sotheby’s will be staying in the UK after the overseas buyer withdrew their application to export the painting.