North America

The owner of leading south Florida auction house Elite Decorative Arts has pleaded guilty to wildlife trafficking and agreed to a fine of $1.5m.

This version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) celebrated painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ sold for $4.5m (£3.1m) at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in New York yesterday. It was an oil sketch with quite a backstory.

Sotheby's have announced a new buyer’s premium structure in New York. Effective from February 1, the rates will apply as follows:

The heavy volume of snow on the East Coast of America has led to the cancelling and rescheduling of auctions.

Heritage Auctions of Dallas and New York have reported their best year ever in 2014, with sales topping $969m.

David and Lee Ann Lester have cancelled their American International Fine Art Fair in Palm Beach, Florida at the last moment, citing changing market forces.

Philatelic and numismatic specialists Spink have posted annual sales figures of just under £29m.

Delftware experts Aronson of Amsterdam have recently reunited this pair of c.1690 Delft ‘bouquetière’ figures depicting William and Mary.

An example of the first of America’s iconic silver dollars will be on sale at Spink USA later this month.

More than half the receipts from Christie’s inaugural Exceptional sale in New York came from a single lot. And it was one with quite a history.

“It is a somewhat incoherent narrative, which, however, gives Lon Chaney an opportunity to turn up in an uncanny disguise and also to manifest his powers as Scotland Yard’s expert hypnotist. You are therefore treated to close-ups of Mr Chaney’s rolling orbs, which, fortunately, do not exert their influence on the audience.”

James Watson’s 1962 award for his work on DNA set a world record price for a Nobel Prize Medal at Christie’s in New York when it sold for $4.1m (£2.6m) hammer.

Christie’s New York are offering the 1962 Nobel Prize gold medal awarded to Dr James D. Watson, one of the world’s greatest living scientists.

Antiques Young Guns has announced it will launch the brand in the USA in 2015 through a new partnership with US Antiques Shows (USAS).

New York has witnessed some spectacular auction prices of late and another came last week as ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1’ by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was knocked down at $39.5m (£26.3m) at Sotheby’s American art sale.

Christie’s latest evening sale of Contemporary art in New York posted a premium-inclusive total of $852.9m (£557.4m), a new record for any auction.

Christie’s are to extend their ground-floor exhibition space at Rockefeller Plaza in the heart of Manhattan to boost private sales.

Works by Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigliani were the highlights of the latest series of Impressionist & Modern art series in New York.

Mallett’s first major outing following the announcement of the Stanley Gibbons deal will be at Brian and Anna Haughton’s 26th International Fine Art & Antiques Show in New York from October 17-23.

Still Life, Vase with Daisies, painted by Vincent van Gogh at the home of his physician Paul Gachet just weeks before he died, carries an estimate of $30m-50m at Sotheby’s New York on November 4. It will be on view in London from October 12-18.