Christie's

The Contemporary art market survived better than many had expected at the London auction series last week.

In a week of varying results, the Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist Art sales at Christie's and Sotheby's London took £228.8m with premium in total (compared with £381.4m for the equivalent series last year).

A new auction high for a ski poster was established at Christie’s South Kensington’s annual Ski sale, held on January 21, when this 1934 colour lithograph advertising the attractions of the Swiss resort of Gstaad sold for £62,000 (plus premium).

Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s saw sales fall in 2015, a sign that the art market may be slowing.

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.

Scientific, medical and natural history books from the library of the Royal Institution are to be sold at Christie’s on December 1.

A small Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) sculpture bought at a Christie’s auction by The Pier Arts Centre in Orkney has now gone on display.

An Apple-1, the technology that heralded a revolution in home computing when it was launched as Apple’s first product in 1976, is for sale via Christie’s online.

Christie’s have announced a new themed week of sales in New York next April.

The collection of medals awarded to Ernest Shackleton, the most decorated of the Polar explorers, excelled at a recent Christie’s South Kensington sale.

Simon de Pury’s sale of the Lambert collection, trailed as a litmus test for high-end digital auctions, will now be conducted as a bricks and mortar event from the rostrum at King Street.

Christie’s have announced a major highlight for the upcoming New York auction series. They are offering Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude) which they have estimated at in excess of $100m.

The UK government has placed a temporary export bar on the earliest known on-the-spot depiction of Niagara Falls which sold at Christie’s South Kensington earlier this year.

Guillaume Cerutti, chief executive of Sotheby’s France and European deputy chairman, is to leave and join Christie’s as president for London, Continental Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India.

This striking 2ft 1½in (64.4cm) high Luba figural bowstand made c.1880 by the Warua Master was the runaway star of London’s high season sales.

A stolen Auguste Rodin sculpture, recovered after it was consigned to Christie’s in 2011, will go to auction later this year.

A rare painting by Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) that had hung in the Prime Minister’s residence at 10, Downing Street for nine years led Christie’s evening sale of Old Master & British paintings in London.

The latest series of Contemporary art auctions in London posted a bumper total despite the failure of some big-ticket lots.

A group of restituted paintings were among the highlights of a robust series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in London.