BIRMINGHAM, UK – Fellows’ auction of antique and modern jewelry on Oct. 15 features “property of a lady” – the late British novelist Mary Lady Stewart, nee Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow (1916-2014). LiveAuctioneers.com will provide absentee and Internet live bidding.
Hong Kong (AFP) – A rare drawing of comic book hero Tintin by Belgian cartoonist Herge fetched over $1 million at auction in Hong Kong Monday as experts say comic art is becoming as collectible as paintings.
The artwork is an illustration from the cartoonist’s The Blue Lotus book, published in 1936, which sees Tintin and sidekick Snowy the dog on an adventure in Shanghai.
An Asian collector reportedly paid HK$9.6 million ($1.2 million).
Drawn in monochrome, it shows Tintin being pulled along a street in a rickshaw with a policeman looking on.
The drawing is the only original from the book to remain in private hands with the rest in museums.
The Blue Lotus is considered by specialists as the masterpiece album of Herge.
The piece had been predicted to sell at between HK$8.6 million and HK$13 million.
The record for a Tintin piece was set by a 1937 comic strip sold at an auction in Paris in May for $3.4 million. It was bought by an American collector.
Despite a downturn in the Chinese economy which some fear will dent the region’s burgeoning art market, auction houses in Hong Kong say they are still optimistic that rare pieces will sell.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – A Massachusetts theology college has abandoned plans to sell off art from 52 Native tribes, including Tlingit and Haida items, as the federal government investigates. The Andover Newton Theological School could face penalties for quietly planning the sale of 80 Native art pieces this summer, possibly violating a federal law that would require some times to be returned to the tribes, reported KTOO-FM.
MARGATE, N.J. (AP) – She’s been hit by lightning (twice), had a giant tent pole slammed into her posterior, and been subjected to pokes and prods from the feet of climbing children. But what’s currently afflicting Lucy The Elephant is a tiny plague; grains of windblown sand that are eating away at her wooden railings and scouring the paint from her wood and tin hide. The 134-year-old tourist attraction near the beach in Margate, just outside Atlantic City, needs to have some crumbling wood replaced, along with a new coat of paint from head to multicolored toenails.
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CORRALES, N.M. (AP) – At a time when life could be harsh in the American Southwest, outhouses served more than one important role. They provided structure, protected water resources and created important social norms, a New Mexico professor says.
NEW YORK (ACNI) – The widely acknowledged “correction” in the Chinese art market – both within China and beyond – seems not to have had an effect on one recent, high-profile sale. On September 12th, Gianguan Auctions in New York City sold a painting by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III for a staggering $10,200,000 on the hammer (the buyer’s premium was not disclosed). LiveAuctioneers provided absentee and Internet live bidding services for the sale.
PORTLAND, Maine – Barridoff Galleries will sell more than 200 artworks – American, European, Old Masters and Asian – at auction on Friday, Oct. 16. Many of the works have been consigned from family art collections. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide absentee and Internet live bidding.