It is June in London and, as on every other day in what is now nostalgically referred to here as summer, it is raining. This is not appreciated by the thousands of overseas visitors flocking to the capital to enjoy its numerous tourist attractions. But for those heading to the Masterpiece Fair, held in an enormous architectural marquee in the grounds of the Royal Hospital in fashionable Chelsea, it is a good excuse for spending a few hours gazing at museum-quality works of art, Maserati motor cars, Riva power boats, and other high-ticket luxury goods.

This year the entrance to the fair was lent added impact by pair of enormous candelabra made from empty blue champagne bottles by French-born sculptor Joana Vasconcelos.

The work was part of a “sculpture walk” that was one of the least successful aspects of the event, the works being rather clumsily situated and poorly promoted.

Masterpiece is a modest version of Maastricht’s much grander European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), but is nevertheless one of the most important events in the London art and antiques calendar. It is difficult to get an accurate picture of how successful these fairs are each year since dealers understandably tend to put a positive spin on how much business they are doing, even if they are doing none at all. The best way to judge the viability of a fine art fair is whether it survives in the longer term. Masterpiece is now in its fourth year, which would suggest that the model works. However, the word among exhibitors was that around 40 major dealers had elected not to appear this year, perhaps as a result of the significant increase in stand rents. The organizers therefore had to work hard to find newcomer replacements.

One dealer in European polychrome sculpture who was appearing for the second time described the stand fees as “shockingly expensive,” while another firm specializing in Russian works of art chose not to come at all this year. Their representative told Auction Central News: “Last year’s stand rental of £50,000 has been increased to £65,000 this year, which we cannot afford.” Others keep coming, however, despite not doing any business. Mayfair-based 19th-century picture dealers Stair Sainty were appearing for the third year, but director Stair Sainty said, “We are virgins. In three years we have yet to make a sale at this fair.” He was hoping to find a buyer for an important work by Delaroche, Les Enfants d’Edouard,

familiar from the larger version in the Wallace Collection known as The Princes in the Tower.

Some business was, however, being done. Philip Mould, London’s specialist dealer in Old Master portraits, sold an important Nicholas Hilliard miniature, known as The Cholmondely Hilliard, a portrait of An Unknown Woman of the Tudor Court, for £200,000 ($304,250), while London sculpture dealer Robert Bowman sold two works by Modern British sculptor Kenneth Armitage and a 1982 Henry Moore, Head of Horse, for £35,000 ($53,250).

Peter Osborne of Bruton Street-based Modern British dealers Osborne Samuel also spoke positively. “You have to bring the right things to a fair like this. You need to bring masterpieces to Masterpiece if you want to do well.” He claimed to have sold classic works by Modern British sculptors Lynn Chadwick and Henry Moore and a major work by Frank Auerbach. The Fine Art Society sold a large sculpted granite head by Emily Young, which was the centerpiece of the fair’s champagne-bar piazza. The price was £120,000 ($182,500).

These results are surely a slightly more reliable index of the value of a fair like Masterpiece than the celebrity factor, which, predictably perhaps, grabs all the media headlines. Sarah Jessica Parker, Uma Thurman and former Roxy Music crooner Bryan Ferry were among the luminaries present at the glitzy preview evening, although whether Ferry chose to sing a few tunes to the accompaniment of the Twist Piano on the stand of London contemporary design atelier, Based Upon, remains unconfirmed. The piano, which was played by a gifted young pianist throughout the fair, was one of the star attractions, providing a relaxing and eye-catching diversion for visitors.

With the right forward planning, events like Masterpiece can be a launch pad for more ambitious partnerships. Auction Central News was present for the evening party staged by the Fine Art Asia Fair in the Hong Kong Pavilion stand.

The event brought together a number of Hong-Kong based contemporary art and design businesses to create a display aiming to promote a partnership between Masterpiece and the Fine Art Asia Fair 2013, which takes place in October.

Works on display at the Pavilion included some exquisite sculptural objects in Canadian maple and bronze by architect designer Chi Wing Lo (born 1954), brush paintings by Lue Shou Kwan (1919-1975) and contemporary sculpted metal garments by acclaimed Hong Kong artist Man Fung-Yi (born 1968).

Calvin Hui, co-chairman and director of Fine Art Asia, told Auction Central News: “We aim to build a strong partnership with Masterpiece London to expand the opportunities to promote galleries in both Asia and Europe and will be hosting a European Pavilion at Fine Art Asia in October in order to reciprocate this evening’s event.” The long-term goal is to encourage Asian collectors to engage with “Western museum-quality fine art in order to take collecting in Asia to the next level,” said Hui.

The connection between the London and Asian art markets was reinforced elsewhere this month with the announcement that London’s leading dealers in Asian art, Eskenazi Ltd., have appointed Sara Wong as a director of the company.

Wong’s career should be an encouragement to any aspiring graduate seeking to succeed in the highly competitive art market. An Oxford graduate in English Literature with a master’s degree in Chinese Studies from Harvard University, she joined Eskenazi in 1993 as a gallery assistant before moving to New York to work for Christie’s, eventually becoming vice president and specialist in the Asian art department. She returned to Eskenazi in 1999 and has now risen to the role of full director.

Turning to the London European fine art scene, this week saw the unveiling of another major sculpture by acclaimed British artist Helaine Blumenfeld, now widely recognized as the most significant sculptor of her generation. Blumenfeld’s works are in important public and private collections around the world, but the UK has recently been catching on to the appeal of her extraordinary large-scale works in marble, which are fabricated by a team of skilled artisans in Pietrasanta, Tuscany to Blumenfeld’s designs. The latest work to find a London home is her 4-meter-high Spirit of Life,

made in the Studio Sem workshops in Pietrasanta in 2007. The piece stands on a plinth opposite the famous Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, which is expected to be seen by an average of 700,000 people per day, although quite how those statistics were computed has not been revealed.

Finally, a notable event in the world of painting this month was the announcement that London-born painter Thomas Newbolt has been awarded first prize in the 2013 Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait competition.

The artist’s subtly expressive and searching image won out against 120 shortlisted works from over 1,000 competition entrants and can be seen on the walls of Kings Place in Kings Cross until Sept. 22.

 

 

LONDON – It would be reasonable to assume that the last thing you would need when building an online auction room is a bricklayer’s trowel. After all, bricks and mortar are so last year, are they not? But if the trowel is of the George IV silver-gilt variety and for sale with an estimated value of around £5,000-7,000 ($7,500-10,500), then it might be just the ticket to get your new online business off the ground, so to speak.

It is entirely appropriate, then, that the ceremonial trowel coming under the hammer of the new, London-based, exclusively online auction business — The Auction Room (dot com) — on June 6 is engraved with the arms of the City of London. The new auction venture is the brainchild of former Sotheby’s specialists George Bailey and Lucinda Blythe who are hoping to succeed where others have failed. They may have timed it just right.

The London art research firm Art Tactic recently conducted a report into the use of technology in the art market in association with Hiscox insurers. It revealed a significant surge in the take-up of e-commerce platforms by private collectors in recent years, which bodes well for start-ups like The Auction Room. Bailey told Auction Central News that even if this week’s inaugural sales get off to an uncertain start, the venture will grow in time.

“If you look at the big contemporary art sales in New York recently, it’s clear that the middle price bracket is being left behind and as sale commissions continue to rise there are opportunities for new business initiatives to enter the digital space.” He referred to a recent live auction at Sotheby’s New Bond Street premises where 120 seats were provided for bidders but only nine people turned up.

For now, The Auction Room will be concentrating on smaller, more portable objects — silver, jewelry and watches — which will be on view at Brown’s Hotel in Albemarle Street prior to each sale. Other categories will come on stream in the fullness of time. The inaugural sale of fine jewelry takes place on June 4 and will include a fine platinum and diamond spray brooch estimated at £20,000-25,000 ($30,200-37,800),

while the watch auction on June 5 will feature a ladies Harry Winston wristwatch estimated at £12,000-14,000 ($18,150-21,160).

It was originally given by Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, to a well-respected employee. The George IV trowel, used by the Lord Mayor of London in 1828 to open the building of London Bridge, will be offered on June 6.

Whether Bailey and Blythe’s interactive virtual saleroom will “transform the traditional auction experience” as they anticipate, remains to be seen, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

The Auction Room is not the only inaugural art event taking place over the coming weeks. June is always a busy time in London as overseas visitors arrive, brollies and guide-books in hand, to explore the many art fairs and other cultural attractions.

One of the most significant new events this year is London Art Week, a collaboration between dealers across the three main traditional categories — paintings, drawings and sculpture. These “tentless” events are in part a response to the proliferation of marquee blockbusters such as Art Antiques London and Masterpiece (both June) and Frieze (October). London Art Week aims to foreground the intimacy and ambience of the “bricks and mortar” gallery experience in contrast to the “mall” art fair culture currently sweeping the globe. It is the first time that Master Paintings Week, Master Drawings Week and Sculpture Week have come together under one umbrella. Judging from the recent summer weather here in London, umbrellas will certainly be needed.

Notable objects on view in London Art Week include a late Hellenistic marble torso of an athlete (circa second-first century B.C.) inspired by Polykleitos, one of the most influential Greek sculptors of the High Classical Period, which will be with Rupert Wace Fine Art,

while a Thomas Gainsborough drawing, Wooded Landscape with a Country Cart and Faggot Gatherers, dating from the 1760s, will be on view with Old Master Drawings dealer Stephen Ongpin.

Lowell Libson Ltd. is exhibiting a collection of 20 oil studies and 40 drawings by James Ward R.A. (1769–1859) that will throw light on every aspect of his career and working methods.

It would not be an English summer without a few open air sculpture exhibitions. Two of the most significant shows opening in June are the University of Leicester’s annual Open Air Sculpture Show at the Harold Martin Botanical Gardens in Leicester, which runs from late June until October, and “Fresh Air,” the biennial outdoor sculpture show at The Old Rectory, Quenington, Cirencester, from June 16 to July 7.

 The organizers of the Quenington event say its purpose is “to wash the dust from the soul of everyday life” and to provide the opportunity to celebrate the vitality and diversity of outdoor sculpture. Regular exhibitors include the renowned British sculptor Terence Coventry who will be showing one of his popular Couple sculptures,

while among the more conceptual works on display is A Bench by Hannah Davies, priced at £1,350 ($2,040).

Her Majesty the Queen has sat for a fair number of artists during her long reign, the most memorable of which is perhaps the work by Lucian Freud. The latest portraitist to venture into what must be a nerve-wracking hot seat behind the easel is British painter Nicky Philipps.

Commissioned by the Royal Mail, Philipps’ portrait of Her Majesty will be used for a special stamp issue to mark the 60th anniversary of The Queen’s coronation. Royal Mail will be gifting the portrait to the Royal Collection but before that happens it will be on view to the public during the artist’s solo exhibition at Fine Art Commissions in Duke Street, St. James’s from June 5-28.

Philipps’ portrait will be in noble company in St. James’s at the end of June. Wander just a hundred yards up Duke Street into Jermyn Street you will find the Weiss Gallery, where from June 28 until July 5 there is a chance to see a magnificent full-length portrait of Mary, Lady Vere, by the Jacobean artist William Larkin.

Vere was a member of one of 17th-century England’s most noble Puritan families. It is an extraordinary image, Lady Vere’s appropriately black gown contrasting with the crisply painted folds of a crimson curtained backdrop. The painting is one of the highlights of a fine exhibition of Old Master paintings at the Weiss Gallery during London Art Week mentioned above. It will be well worth making a detour to see.

 

LONDON – “Damn. Get that on the radio and they’ll run us out of town.”

The poetic words of rock ’n’ roll session-man Bill Black after recording That’s All Right with Elvis Presley at Sun Studios in Memphis in July 1954. At Whytes auction house in Dublin recently it was more a case of “Get that under the hammer and the buyers will run into town” because the acetate of that landmark recording—Elvis’ first commercial release—was the star of Whytes’ groundbreaking rock and pop memorabilia sale where it realized a hammer price of €65,000 ($84,800).

A few lots later, Elvis’ Mathey-Tissot wristwatch added a further €8,000 ($10,450) to the sale total.

Rock and pop memorabilia is a long-established category in the UK auction arena. Not only does it help to broaden an auction house’s public profile, it can also introduce a younger clientele to the pleasure of auctions. The trick, of course, is to assemble enough prestigious material to bring in the buyers and focus media attention. Whytes’ sale was Ireland’s first ever auction of rock and pop material. Its success was due in no small measure to the inclusion not only of that rare relic of early Elvis recording history but to a decent tranche of Beatles collectibles too. The most keenly contested of the Fab Four lots was a cover of the 1970 hit single Let It Be, signed in ballpoint pen by all four members of the band, which realized €4,300 ($5,600).

Coincidentally, Beatles signatures also appeared this month at sales held by Cirencester auctioneers Moore Allen and Innocent and at Duke’s auction rooms in Dorchester. Moore Allen’s signatures featured in an album containing signatures by a host of other stars too, including The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Orson Welles and Bing Crosby which together realized £3,800 ($5,890) while Duke’s Beatles signatures, also in an album with those of Roy Orbison and many others, fetched £1500 ($2,325). These coincidences can be a useful guide to market values.

One other lot worth mentioning at Duke’s sale was a fine landscape of 1952 by Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) titled Potato Patch, Rostrevor, which found a buyer just under the lower end of the estimate at £195,000 ($302,000).

That price indicates the infrequency with which major works by Spencer come up for sale.

Perhaps the most noteworthy news from the regions this month was the innovative collaboration forged between the new UK regional auction body, the Association of Accredited Auctioneers (known as “Triple A” for short), and their Chinese counterparts. The 21 members of the UK group contributed lots to a 900-lot auction of Western art and antiques staged in Xiamen Freeport on April 19 in conjunction with Epailive, Asia’s on-line live bidding portal.

Guildford auctioneer Chris Ewbank

was the main entrepreneurial force behind the project. He told Auction Central News that although only around 25 percent of the lots found buyers the consensus was that the endeavor had been a great success. “An unsold rate like that would be considered a disaster in the UK,” he said. “But that didn’t apply here. We were mainly concerned to test the market and we succeeded in that regard. We covered our costs and learned a great deal about the potential for future collaborations with China.”

Ewbank said that an enthusiastic reception greeted the silver, clocks and the better quality Victorian and Edwardian furniture in the sale, but other categories were clearly not wanted by Chinese buyers. These includes pictures, coins, stamps and most of the higher value furniture. That said, notable exceptions included an important pair of Louis XVI-style gilt bronze amboyna center tables by Francois Linke, which sold for 2.3 million RMB ($377,960),

while a highly unusual Louis XV-style gilt bronze mounted kingwood and marquetry writing desk and cartonnier, the clock dial signed “Brindeau a Paris,” sold for 1.38 million RMB ($226,790), and a fine Louis XVI-style gilt bronze mounted marquetry commode after a model by Jean Henri Riesener sold for 1.15 million RMB (£188,980). Those are decent prices under any circumstances.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the sale, according to the UK auctioneers, was the 94,300 RMB ($15,500) paid for a pair of late 19th-century bronze Marly horses after Guillaume Coustou the Elder, which had been estimated at 38,000-50,000 RMB.

“I see this venture as a huge international coup for our members,” said Ewbank. “We are also giving a lead to Chinese auctioneers’ associations because they are not happy with what is happening in their market and want to see it develop properly.” The sale went out under the slogan: “Paving the Way to Greater Transparency.” It will be interesting to see whether future collaborative ventures between the various parties succeed in delivering on that laudable aim.

With so much media attention currently focused on the high-ticket, blue-chip end of the art market, Triple A’s attempt to open up new overseas markets for mid-price furniture, works of art and collectibles has to be seen in a positive light. Here at home, and sensitive to these recessionary times, some UK auctioneers have been marketing themselves as “recycling agents”—an affordable and environmentally friendly alternative to buying new. Tennants, the go-ahead North Yorkshire auctioneers, alert to the growth of the Affordable Art Fair— which is now franchised in many cities around the world—have started holding sales of “Antique Interiors and Affordable Art,” which seem to be going down well with local buyers.

In April Tennants also ventured into ethnographic material and arms and armor. They saw lively bidding for three Andaman Island wooden bows of double paddle form, which climbed over an estimate of £600-800 to make £5,800 ($8,975),

while among the collectible guns a pair of late 18th-century officer’s flintlock dueling pistols by Robert Wogdon of London made £6,000 ($9,300)

and a pair of early 19th-century flintlock pistols by Clark of London, brought £3,800 ($5,880).

LONDON – One of the most extraordinary events on the UK provincial auction circuit in recent years was the sale at Ewbank Clarke Gammon in Woking, Surrey, in April 2007 of a consignment of discarded fragments from the studio of Francis Bacon. The pieces in question — and in pieces they truly were — had been thrown onto a dumpster outside the artist’s studio from where they were “rescued” by an electrician, Mac Robertson, who had been working at Bacon’s studio at the time. Robertson later claimed that Bacon had given him permission to take the material, although whether Bacon, who died in 1992, had any idea that the stuff would later surface at a Surrey auction rooms is doubtful.

In any event, when Robertson finally consigned the so-called Robertson Collection to the Woking auction — 45 lots of letters, diaries, photographs, ephemera and a few small oil paintings (many of them “canceled” by Bacon using a box-cutter) — the haul, offered by auctioneer Chris Ewbank in separate lots, realized over £1 million.

Now another chapter is about to be written in the annals of discarded Bacons. Many years ago, Lewis Todd, a Cambridge-based commercial artist, acquired some secondhand canvases from Heffers, a UK art materials supplier, seemingly unaware of the importance of what was on the back. That turned out to be nothing less than some of Francis Bacon’s studies for his famous “Screaming Pope” series.

Todd was told he could use the canvases as long as he cut them into pieces. Those fragments have also now been consigned for sale, and once again Chris Ewbank will be wielding the gavel on March 20. The consignment is “conservatively estimated” to make around £100,000 ($152,000), although the reception that greeted the Robertson collection suggests that “conservative” could turn out to be something of an understatement. In November 2012, Francis Bacon’s Untitled (Pope) of 1954 sold in a New York auction for a record £18.7 million ($28.4 million). Sadly, Todd died in 2006 and so did not live to see his old canvases make auction history. Auction Central News will be at the Woking sale to witness what promises to be another remarkable moment in the bizarre history of sliced Bacon.

The UK’s provincial fine art salerooms are full of surprises, as the Bacon story confirms. Not everything has to sell for a six-figure price to be newsworthy, however, although the connection with a celebrity or a famous person clearly helps. Tennants of Leyburn, North Yorkshire, are arguably the most important UK auction room north of London and their regular sales often deliver notable prices. On Feb. 22, they held a sale of cameras and photographic equipment that included a fascinating set of 135 magic lantern slides taken from photographs by Frank Hurley documenting Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic from 1914-1917.

The images were used in the illustrated book South with Endurance published in 2001, which perhaps helped to push them above an estimate of £2,000-3,000 to a hammer price of £4,500 ($6,830).

Meanwhile, Tennants’ book sale on Feb. 27 included a volume that for many adults will be remembered with the same fondness that young people reserve for the Harry Potter series today — Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. The first edition that appeared here, dated 1930 (it was still popular in the 1960s and 1970s), retained its dust jacket and was in excellent condition. Originally priced at 7s 6d (the equivalent of 37 pence sterling in today’s currency), the hammer fell at £7,000 ($10,640), a price that may send many adults scampering into their attics to search for their own long-neglected copies. Condition is everything, however.

Down at the other end of the country, LiveAuctioneers client Canterbury Auction Rooms enjoyed good prices across most categories of their Feb. 12 sale. Among the paintings was a small oil on panel by Antonietta Brandeis (1849-1910) depicting the Piazza San Marco (View of St. Mark’s Square, Venice) looking toward the cathedral.

Signed and enclosed in a deep gilt moulded and swept frame, it was contested past an estimate of £1,200-1,600 to a hammer price of £8,800 ($13,375). A few moments later a signed oil on canvas study of a seated fox terrier by John Emms (1843-1912) fetched £4,600 ($6,840) against an estimate of £2,500-3,500.

Finally, among the watches was a good 19th century silver and tortoise-shell covered triple-cased verge pocket watch by Edward Prior, London, the case hallmarked for 1866.

Prior, who is recorded working in London from 1800-1868 was regarded as a maker of some repute and was especially noted for producing watches like this one for the Turkish market. That small nugget of information may have propelled it way over the low estimate, the hammer falling at £3,100 ($4,700).

A dozen or so years ago, Internet entrepreneurs were struggling to convince the conservative auction industry of the potential benefits of embracing new technology. Today, most auctioneers are enthusiastic devotees and it’s easy to see why. Barely a week goes by without further evidence of the benefits of circulating your auction catalogs electronically and bringing the global market into the saleroom via internet bidding. East Yorkshire auctioneers Dee Atkinson and Harrison, provided us with the most recent instance of this at their general sale of antiques and fine art on Feb. 15. Hiding among the lots of metalware was a lot cataloged simply as “An Eastern copper hanging bowl of boat shaped form chased with bands of stylized flower heads and fitted with suspension chain, 9 1/2 inches wide, together with a cast brass figure of an Eastern deity, 7 1/2 inches high.” The poor Eastern deity — which was not illustrated in the catalog — may have been somewhat overlooked by the auctioneers, but thanks to new technology the trade spotted it and knew what it was.

The illustration shown here offers more than a hint that this was no ordinary “cast brass figure” a suggestion confirmed when a derisory estimate of £30-£40 was demolished by a winning bid of £11,100 ($16,870).

And finally a brief note about one of the most important European fine art fairs happening in March. The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht needs no introduction since it is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important fine art fairs in the world. TEFAF boasts a range of historical material that makes the numerous contemporary events seem somewhat shallow by comparison. It is hard to summarize the TEFAF experience. Suffice to say that it always feels like a privilege to be exposed to so many museum-quality works of art across so many sectors of the market. Happily the Old Master category — which originally gave rise to the fair in the mid-1980s — remains one of TEFAF’s core strengths. Although not exactly typical of the quality on offer, since it is extraordinary by any measure, the masterpiece by Orazio Gentilleschi (1563-1639) — David Contemplating the Head of Goliath — on the stand of London’s Weiss Gallery, is a good example of why it is worth making the trip to the Dutch city. Unpublished and having been in private collections in France and Belgium since the 1930s, its market freshness and historical importance have resulted an asking price of around 8 million euros ($10.4 million).

Although not perhaps of quite same historical significance, another work on the Weiss stand this year is a recently rediscovered work by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of London’s Royal Academy. Study for the Uffizi Self-Portrait

was painted around 1774-5 after the Grand Duke of Tuscany asked Reynolds to contribute to the gallery of self-portraits that formed part of the Medici Collection at the Uffizi in Florence. Keen to be seen as an intellectual, Reynolds portrayed himself in the scarlet robes and black velvet cap of an Oxford University Doctor of Civil Law, an honorary title of which he was immensely proud. Given Reynolds importance in the annals of 18th-century English painting, the asking price of 285,000 euros ($373,100) seems eminently reasonable. It is just the sort of picture that brings museum curators from around the world to Maastricht seeking to fill gaps in their collections.

Before the TEFAF fair gets under way, however, many international dealers and collectors will be looking to stop over in London for the British Antique Dealers’ Fair (the BADA Fair), which takes place at the Duke of York’s Square in Chelsea from March 13. Rather than preview it here, Auction Central News will be at the fair and we will report the highlights next month.

LONDON – The London Science Museum may not be the most obvious venue in which to hold an art fair, particularly since it is located directly opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum, which it would be reasonable to assume might be a more appropriate location. And yet the annual Watercolours & Works on Paper Fair, which began this week and continues until Sunday, seemed perfectly at home on the first floor of the Science Museum when we attended the opening day. It had been allocated its own space well away from the early steam engines, Apollo space capsules and other scientific exhibits that draw crowds of fascinated school children and families all year round.

Of course, it is in the nature of art fairs that once inside you are so distracted by the works on display that the broader environment seems to disappear. The Watercolours and Works on Paper Fair is a somewhat sedate event attracting an older demographic who appreciate its mix of the traditional and the acceptably modern (without too much of that curious stuff called Contemporary Art). Indeed it was so sedate that one visitor was seen snoozing happily on a vacant bench.

One of the more reliable ways to gauge how much business is being done at an art fair is to chat to the men who do the packing and wrapping. “It’s been nonstop since the fair opened,” said the man in the wrapping booth as he took a well-earned rest.

“And it’s only the first day.” This was not, however, the message of all the dealers. London dealer Duncan Miller, who specializes in Scottish artists, said trade was slow. “It’s difficult. It has been for some time. You need a certain amount of luck at these events.” It was the first time Mr. Miller had shown at the fair but he was hopeful things would pick up. He had already sold one large mixed media work by the Edinburgh School painter Ann Oram. When we visited the stand on the opening day there was much interest in Oram’s Garden Still Life

, which was priced at £8,500 ($13,460).

Elsewhere at the fair, London-based painter and printmaker Natasha Kumar was enjoying a lot of interest in her vibrant prints inspired by her travels in India. Her Artshouse stand, located at the entrance to the fair, was thronged with visitors admiring her Holy Cow screenprint series, examples of which were priced at £1400.

Turning to the UK auction circuit, Yorkshire-based LiveAuctioneers clients Tennants held another of their popular “Country House” sales this month, which included a few surprises. A pair of Italian walnut three-drawer chests had been estimated at just £300-400, largely on account of their seriously shabby condition.

The candid catalog description itemized their faded color, “various worm holes,” splits and missing handles, although on the plus side “the drawers operate well.” Clearly there was some work to be done, but they were unusual enough and showed sufficient potential for restoration to attract a bid of £3,200 ($5,050). Meanwhile, Tennants’ January sale of arms, armor and militaria included a rare Colt First Model Dragoon six-shot percussion revolver, with a New York City stamp, the cylinder bearing traces of an engraved Texas Ranger and Indian scene.

It came with its original leather holster and was in good enough condition to beat at estimate of £2,500-3,500, eventually selling for £4,600 ($7,260).

Coincidentally, the gun is at the center of another American-themed event in the coming weeks as the American Museum in Britain prepares to stage an exhibition entitled “Gangsters & Gunslingers: The Good, The Bad and the Memorabilia.” The exhibition, which runs from March 23 to Nov. 3 at the museum’s premises at Claverton Manor in Bath, has been loaned by Channel Islands-based Americana collector David Gainsborough Roberts. The exhibition’s theme centers on America’s outlaw heroes and brings together memorabilia from what the curators describe as “two defining chapters that shaped America’s national identity” — the Wild West from the mid-1860s to the late 1880s, and the wild years of the Prohibition/Depression era of the 1920s and early 1930s.

American visitors to the UK over the summer will have good reason to swing by the American Museum in Britain as they head down to the windswept beaches and rain-soaked holiday resorts of the West Country, for there are treasures galore on show. Highlights include the watch retrieved by souvenir hunters from the wrist of Clyde Barrow after he and Bonnie Parker had been ambushed and mercilessly riddled with bullets by federal agents. Clyde had not, perhaps, been wearing his bullet-proof vest that day, which features in the exhibition

as does a silver cigarette case owned by notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone.

Rather more grisly is the death mask of Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger, which faithfully records the exit wound made by the federal agent’s bullet that killed him outside a Chicago cinema in 1934.

The next big event on the horizon for many of the more up-market members of the London fine art trade will be the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht from March 15 to 24. This is arguably the most prestigious fine art fair in the world and is generally regarded as one of the few fairs that, despite being obviously a commercial venture, places equal emphasis on the aesthetic aspect of art as on economic considerations. This year the fair will include a special loan exhibition of 15 drawings by Vincent van Gogh, loaned by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

For those still concerned with the investment potential of fine art — an increasingly influential contingent in the rapidly globalizing art market — this year’s TEFAF opens with another important symposium on the state of the global art market. “Art Symposium: Rising Stars in the Art World” will be held at the fair on Friday, March 15, and will begin with a review of the global art trade during 2012, highlighting the contribution of the emerging economies of China and Brazil. Leading arts economist Dr. Clare McAndrew will present the findings of the latest TEFAF Art Market Report on these issues, which will be launched during this year’s fair. The second theme will be “Top performing artists: why they dominate the market and how they continue to do so.” One is unlikely to find slumbering visitors on the TEFAF benches.

 

The genteel middle-class London suburb of Chiswick likes to think of itself as culturally sophisticated, boasting a noble artistic pedigree that stretches back into the 18th century and beyond. Chiswick House, by the 18th-century designers Lord Burlington and William Kent, is regarded as London’s finest surviving example of neo-Palladian architecture, while Chiswick graveyard’s more notable long-term residents include the daughter of Oliver Cromwell — and, legend has it, the head of the Lord Protector himself.

Whether it was the example of another former Chiswick resident, the 18th-century painter and prolific printmaker William Hogarth, that inspired the late American landscape artist Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012) to choose Chiswick as the location of his only London gallery, remains a mystery. While a bronze statue of Hogarth looks benevolently down on shoppers on the Chiswick High Road, a hundred yards away the gallery of Thomas Kinkade — the self-styled “Painter of Light” — has remained open since Kinkade’s death from an overdose of valium and alcohol in April this year.

This week it was reported that the artist’s $66 million estate has finally been settled, thereby bringing to an end a torrid public battle between the painter’s widow and his girlfriend for control of the estate.

“I didn’t even know the estate had been settled,” said the Chiswick gallery’s representative when Auction Central News visited earlier today. “They have been squabbling over money for so long.” The gallery continues to do brisk business among overseas visitors charmed by the limited-edition chocolate box prints hand-finished by the late artist’s assistants. “They found hundreds of other works in his studio that have never been editioned,” said the gallery assistant, “so there is still a lot of capacity left in the Kinkade brand.”

Elsewhere in the UK art calendar, the new year is often a busy time as the trade hopes to hit the ground running. The National Fine Art & Antiques Fair at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham has traditionally offered an early indicator of how the year might pan out. Thus it was less than encouraging to hear that this year’s event had been canceled due to what the organizers, Clarion Events, described as “insufficient commitment” from the trade. “This has been a very difficult decision, but we believe our reputation for delivering an impressive variety of antiques and fine art would be compromised and ultimately the visitor and exhibitor experience would be adversely affected,” said fair director Tiffany Pritchard.

Whether this cancellation will have a positive effect on another significant new year fair — the Luxury Antiques Weekend at the Mere Golf Resort & Spa in Knutsford, Cheshire, from Jan. 25 to 27, remains to be seen. It is possible that the dealers slated to appear at the canceled NEC Fair were unable to find stock of sufficient quality to justify the journey to Birmingham. That seems not to the be the case with those dealers booked to appear in Cheshire. Elford Fine Art of Tavistock, Devon, is making the long trip north from the West Country to show, among other items, a fine oil on canvas entitled The Red Hat by Charles A. Buchel,

which will be for sale at £14,000 ($22,635), while Norfolk dealer T. Robert will be showing an Irish gold cannetille brooch in the form of a harp decorated with natural pearls and Columbian emeralds, circa 1820,

priced at around £5,000 ($8,080). Among the fine furniture on offer is a handsome William and Mary period laburnum oyster-veneered chest of drawers, circa 1695,

for which Ampthill, Bedfordshire dealers S&S Timms will be asking £19,800 ($32,015).

Not everything in the forthcoming fairs diary conforms to the traditional and occasionally rather staid fine art and antiques template, as can be seen by an interesting image of the Rolling Stones which is due to be shown at the Watercolours and Works on Paper Fair at the Science Museum, South Kensington from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.

The Rolling Stones are hardly under-represented in the annals of contemporary art history. As well as the numerous memorable photographs of the band, what will probably linger longest in the archive is the image of a handcuffed Mick Jagger in the back of a cab alongside the notorious junkie art dealer Robert “Groovy Bob” Fraser in Richard Hamilton’s famous Swingeing London painting of 1968-69 (Tate Britain). The pair had just been arrested following a drugs bust at the house of Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Richards and Jagger were acquitted on appeal; “Groovy Bob” was sentenced to six months hard labor.

The recent Rolling Stones tour has again reinvigorated media interest in the band and this can surely only add commercial luster to the rare 1965 drawing of the Stones by David Oxtoby, titled Stone, Stone, Stone + 1, which will be offered at the Watercolour and Works on Paper Fair priced at £1,400 ($2,260).

The drawing, in ballpoint pen and blue ink and inscribed, signed and dated “Minneapolis 1965,” was drawn from a photograph while Oxtoby was teaching in Minneapolis at the time. The artist devoted much of his work to images of rock ‘n’ roll performers but the present image is seen as particularly treasurable given that much of Oxtoby’s work of the 1960s was lost in a warehouse fire.

On a more traditional note, the ever-reliable Fleming Collection at 13 Berkeley St., London W1 — the spiritual home of Scottish art in London — is about to stage an exhibition to mark the 80th birthday of James Morrison, one of Scotland’s most respected landscape artists. The retrospective, titled “Land and Landscape,” will range from 1950s paintings of the artist’s home city of Glasgow, to more recent images inspired by rural and coastal Scotland and journeys overseas. Morrison’s patrons include the Royal Family and Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, as well as museums and corporate and private collections. The images shown here — the oil on canvas view of a terrace of grimy Glasgow brownstones titled Crown Terrace (1957),

the more recent, lushly brushed and atmospheric Montreathmont Forest (1990),

and the luminous oil on board coastal scene titled Old Montrose Winter (1984)

offer an indiction of Morrison’s extraordinary technical range and ability to capture the spirit of a place, be it rural or urban. The exhibition runs from Feb. 19 to April 6.

While the Fleming Collection is celebrating the Caledonian tradition of landscape painting, the Royal Academy is genuflecting toward the English legacy of landscape masters in an exhibition titled “Constable, Gainsborough, Turner,” which includes numerous familiar images, including Constable’s famous The Leaping Horse of 1825

. The show, which explores the full range of English landscape painting at its height, from the traditions of the awe-inspiring Sublime to that of the pleasing Picturesque, is sure to have the queues snaking out onto Piccadilly for the next several weeks. In yet another of the increasingly common collaborations between cash-strapped institutions and the art trade, the show is supported by leading London dealers Lowell Libson Ltd.

Finally, a brief mention for one of the more significant hammer prices registered outside London over the past few weeks: Yorkshire auctioneers Dee Atkinson and Harrison had a marvelous small bronze by the late British sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993) at their Nov. 30 sale. Man Standing, 13 3/4 inches high, numbered 8 from an edition of 8, had been estimated at £14,000-£16,000 but eventually coaxed a winning bid of £22,500 to top the sale.

With many of the UK’s towns, villages and interconnecting roads still partly submerged thanks to several weeks of interminable rain, the ever-peripatetic trade will be praying for an end to the floods so that the seasonal fair-going and auction-attending can continue uninterrupted.

 

London has once again emerged, blinking, from the annual Frieze contemporary art fair that sweeps the city every October. This year, the usual disorientating dollop of up-to-the-minute contemporary art was tempered by the inaugural Frieze Masters event at the other end of Regents Park, where fairgoers feasted on classic modern works of art mixed with more ancient objects. Most of the punters we polled chose to visit just the contemporary fair, suggesting that the price of the joint ticket was beyond many recession-strapped pockets.

The trade seemed to approve of the new Frieze Masters, however, London Modern British dealers Osborne Samuel enjoying a positive reception for their Henry Moore solo show. Peter Osborne told London Eye it had been “an extremely good fair and long overdue. It put Frieze into context and all round did what we hoped it would. It was very well received; we sold five things including the most expensive and we met loads of really good new collectors from all over, many of whom had come for Frieze and found Frieze Masters afterwards. We’d do it again without hesitation.”

Similar feedback came from Paris-based Galerie Meyer, dealers in Oceanic art. Anthony Meyer told London Eye it was “a wonderful event, extremely well-organized with, of course, a few inconsequential growing pains which will be ironed out in the future.” Meyer concluded it was “worthwhile both in immediate sales and meeting the right people,” describing the clientele as “a very interesting, eclectic crowd, many of whom had never really seen high quality tribal art on display for sale in the UK because of the departure of the tribal auctions to Paris and New York.”

As for whether Frieze Masters could challenge The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), which takes place in Maastricht in the Netherlands every March, Anthony Meyer thinks not. “I will definitely do Frieze Masters again,” he said, “but it will not, and cannot, replace TEFAF.”

Ancient and modern is a developing theme in London at present. This week we were treated to an early preview of a fascinating loan exhibition which will take place at the British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) Fair in London early next year (March 13 to 19). The exhibition will feature a selection of watercolors by the influential painter and “topographer of the picturesque” William Payne (1760-1830). Curated by Payne expert and BADA Fair exhibitor John Spink, the show contrasts watercolor landscapes executed by Payne in the 18th century with the same scenes photographed today. The view across the Plym estuary to Saltram Park near Plymouth seems barely to have changed at all since Payne executed his View of Saltram Park from near Crab Tree,

while his Swansea Bay from near Oystermouth Castle in south Wales is also strikingly similar to the same view today, save for the absence of a few picturesque peasants in the foreground and the Norman castle now obscured by trees.

The exhibition looks set to offer reassuring confirmation that despite the galloping pace of technological progress, the British landscape remains relatively unchanged—surely an appropriate theme for an antiques fair.

One person who will doubtless be hoping that her own paintings are still being enjoyed 200 years from now is Morag Donkin, a talented final year student at Edinburgh College of Art, whose Redhall House 1, an atmospheric oil and ink painting of a disused children’s home in Scotland, has just won the new Fleming-Wyfold Award.

Named after the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation—the charity that runs the noted Fleming Collection, which supports emerging artists with Scottish heritage—the £2,000 award will give Donkin a welcome boost of confidence as she nears graduation. “It’s fantastic, I didn’t expect to win,” she said afterwards, adding that her work is grounded in research based around films, particularly horror movies. “I take an uncanny look at normal life,” she said. The spooky approach seems to be paying off.

It is often remarked that England had no school of home-grown painters during the 17th century, having to rely on the imported talents of the likes of Rubens and van Dyck for its visual culture. A new exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery places the German-born, Dutch-trained Peter Lely back among the greats of the Stuart painters, revealing him as an artist of true poetry and sensuality.

“Peter Lely: A Lyrical Vision,” currently on show until Jan. 13 features a largely forgotten group of early paintings depicting shepherds, nymphs, musicians and other naked or loosely attired figures luxuriating in pastoral landscapes. The canvas entitled Nymphs by a Fountain

is fairly representative of the unabashed eroticism that Lely excelled in at this time, recently prompting the loquacious London art critic Brian Sewell to label the exhibition “a bonne bouche of a show, a delicious morsel.” Certainly Lely’s Boy as a Shepherd

confirms why he won so many admirers at the time, despite the prevailing instability of the Civil War, by managing to evoke a timeless arcadian idyll using contemporary pictorial language.

As Lely’s show makes clear, the Old Masters were able to justify their liberal portrayal of naked flesh by framing their visions as mythological scenes. If the Peter Lely show at the Courtauld leaves your craving yet more disrobed cellulite, you might wander over to the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square where they are celebrating the recent restoration of the Allegory of Fruitfulness by the Flemish master Jacob Jordaens.

It perhaps goes without saying that this marvelous example of Golden Age painting is a rather more appropriate presence in the Wallace Collection’s red flock interiors than the Damien Hirst canvases parked there a year or two ago.

The Jordaens restoration also happens to be a good news story for the art market, for the conservation was made possible thanks to a generous donation of £40,000 from the Masterpiece Fair. The fair organized a charity gala dinner, inviting illustrious patrons and prominent museum curators with the aim of raising funds for one of London’s most treasured museums. Philip Hewat-Jaboor, chairman of Masterpiece, said, “We are delighted that Masterpiece London has been able to contribute to the conservation of this stunning and important work,” the unveiling of which serendipitously coincided with Harvest Festival Week earlier this month.

And so to a contemporary theme. There is still time to catch the exhibition of typically innovative new paintings by Bruce McLean (born 1944) at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery in London’s Cork Street (until Nov. 3). The show, titled “The Shapes of Sculpture,” demonstrates McLean’s tireless exploration of what sculpture means today.

As the gallery phrases it, McLean has, since the 1960s, been interrogating “the condition of sculpture, the nature of its validity, its diverse possibilities of meaning, its propositions and pretensions, its presentations, positionings and re-positionings, its private and public settings, indoor and outdoor, and its critical contexts.” Phew!

Given the brouhaha about public sculpture recently reignited by the installation of Damien Hirst’s monumental bronze écorché figure of a pregnant woman in the sleepy little north Devon seaside town of Ilfracombe, McLean’s show promises a welcome and thoughtful meditation on a perennially controversial topic.

As we indicated in an earlier London Eye, London’s famous Cork Street remains an endangered focal point of the art trade, despite its long and noble history. Watch this space for more news on whether it will survive the recent decision to evict the galleries to make way for radical commercial property development.

It is often said that the art market is becoming increasingly “event-driven,” which is another way of describing the steady proliferation of art and antiques fairs. Few sectors of the global art economy have grown to quite the same extent that fairs have over the past decade. This is surely a positive development since fairs would not have blossomed had the market not recovered so emphatically from the 2008 downturn. Fairs must, therefore, be an indicator of a generally buoyant market. But the growth and multiplication of art fairs does raise important questions. Are we in danger of having too many of these events?

Locations are obviously important – London remains a cultural magnet for the world’s wealthy, while Miami has winter sun – but once you’re inside the marquee, aren’t these fairs all starting to look the same, all populated by the same dealers offering the same kind of stock?

This month London sees the appearance of a new blockbuster fair – Frieze Masters, which, like its sister event, Frieze, will be located in Regent’s Park from Oct. 11-14. The trade seems to have taken to it with alacrity, seeing it as yet another opportunity to reach those High Net Worth collectors of contemporary art who flock to London in their multitudes to attend the main Frieze event. The assumption is that buyers of contemporary art are also often buyers of more classic historical objects. We shall soon see whether that assumption is correct.

While Regent’s Park becomes the focus of art world attention every October, another historic center of London’s art trade is under threat. The capital’s modern and contemporary art dealers are currently working around the clock, mobilizing petitions to save Cork Street in the West End. Earlier this year the landlord of seven galleries on the street sold the building in which they are located to property developers Native Land. The development company plans to knock the building down and replace it with a residential development. Many of the galleries will lose their leases if the planned development goes ahead, including The Mayor Gallery (in Cork Street since the 1920s), Beaux Arts, Alpha Gallery, Adam Gallery, Stoppenbach & Delestre, Waterhouse & Dodd and Gallery 27. It will interesting to see whether the art trade’s uncharacteristic use of the social network to drum up support will pay off (Twitter hash-tag: #saveCorkStreet).

With real estate rents rising, one can see why fairs are attracting so much attention. One American buyer told the organizers of last year’s Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in London’s Battersea Park that it is still economically viable to buy at the London fair and ship the goods across the Atlantic rather than to buy stateside. This presumably applies even to furniture such as the 19th-century Irish ash “bacon settle” that will be offered at this year’s fair by West Sussex dealers Wakelin & Linfield at £9,800 ($15,800).

The Decorative Fair’s emphasis on interiors and the decorator trade has helped it to flourish during tough times. At this week’s event (Oct. 2-7 in Battersea Park), Val Foster of Decorative Collective will be showing a small French handpainted screen by Micheline de Rougemont, signed and dated 1992, for which they are asking £1450 ($2,340),

while Richard Hoppé will be offering a fine pair of Art Nouveau tiles, circa 1900, by Johann von Schwarz of Nürnberg, designed by in-house artist Carl Siegmund Luber.

These will be priced at £4,500 ($7,260).

If the planners and property developers have their way, we may end up looking back on the West End’s heyday as a center of the art trade with the same antiquarian curiosity that we bring to John Sell Cotman’s watercolors of Normandy, a selection of which are about to go on display at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The acclaimed British watercolorist made numerous visits to Normandy in the 1820s to study and paint the region’s medieval architecture.

One of his most celebrated works of the period is a study of Alençon, which includes what is regarded as one of the earliest images of an “antique” shop.

Antique dealers were known in London at that time as brokers, “toymen,” or “nicknackitarians.” Cotman’s image is of a vanished world. Many London dealers will be hoping Cork Street doesn’t end up the same way.

Staying momentarily on the French theme, November sees the opening of the annual Forum d’Avignon – an “independent international think-tank” held in the southern French city of Avignon, which aims to break down the barriers between culture and the economy. This may be another example of the “event-driven” cultural sector, but whether it will foster lasting and productive initiatives between economists and the “culturati” or provide just another opportunity for a good time remains to be seen. Images from last year’s event suggest it is both a hotbed of serious discussion

and a chance to enjoy some good music.

The fifth edition of the Forum will be held in the Palais des Papes in Avignon from Nov. 15-17 and is already taking bookings from London intellectuals and business people. The theme will be “Culture: Reasons to Hope – Imagining and Passing On.”

The Avignon event is a further reminder that we are now all living in a “global” world where the boundaries that formerly separated market sectors are fast disappearing. Mallett, one of London’s most venerable antiques dealers, has been energetically embracing aspects of visual culture beyond the rarefied realm of antique furniture on which its reputation largely rests. The firm recently moved to Ely House, an elegant 18th-century Grade I-listed former bishop’s palace in Mayfair, central London.

In November Mallett will stage an exhibition of the work of contemporary artist Sunita Kumar, who is widely respected in her native India. Kumar was a close friend of the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta and some of the works in Mallett’s exhibition have been inspired by that relationship. With Kumar’s work being endorsed by figures such as M.F. Husain, one of the giants of Indian modernist painting, it is a fair bet that Kumar’s reputation will continue to grow. Certainly her landscapes and interiors, rendered in delicate and vibrant acrylics, look likely to win admirers among those collectors seeking something different from the sort of noisy contemporary art currently dominating the media.

As Husain himself commented, “In the midst of all the technical bravado and dazzle of art events, a painter serene in her presence and subtle in her rendering of images in color and line whispers in your ears … that serene and silent painter is Sunita Kumar.” The exhibition “Sunita Kumar’s India’ will be at Mallett at Ely House from Nov. 1-10.

The directors of the Fleming Collection, the spiritual home of Scottish art in London, are of the firm opinion that the work of the Scottish Colorist Leslie Hunter is “brilliant, but still misunderstood.” One way to dispel such a misunderstanding is, of course, to mount a major exhibition of Hunter’s work, which is what the Fleming Collection has done. “Leslie Hunter: A Life in Colour” includes examples of Hunter’s work made during his various sojourns in San Francisco, France and Italy as well as in his native Scotland.

Bill Smith and Jill Marriner, who have written a new biography of Hunter, believe the Scotsman was a brilliant painter but remains misunderstood and “the least appreciated of the four Scottish Colourists” (they are referring, of course, to his colleagues John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Cadell and Samuel John Peploe). Peploe himself once said that Hunter’s best pictures were “as good as Matisse,” who was clearly an inspiration to all of them.

Hunter’s work was, however, marred by ill health (he died at the young age of 54). We will get a chance to judge the extent to which Hunter deserves to be reappraised at the exhibition, which runs at the Fleming Collection’s premises at 13 Berkeley St. from Oct. 23-Feb. 2.

With “London 2012” nearing its conclusion, the capital is braced for a return to normality. It may land with a bump. Londoners are already preparing to bid farewell to the efficient transport system magically laid on for the Games and to welcome in its place the congested, dysfunctional road and rail network to which they are accustomed.

Fortunately the more prestigious art and antiques fairs scheduled for September and October are generally patronized by the sort of high net worth clientèle that eschews public transport in favor of the black cab or private limousine. So, despite the lingering recession, the weeks ahead still hold plenty of commercial promise for the trade.

They say there’s an app for everything and you know that must be true when even a somewhat conservative trade body like the Association of Art and Antiques Dealers has developed an iPhone app for its Berkeley Square Fair that is scheduled to run from Sept. 19 to 23.

The app informs you about the fair’s exhibitors and offers directions and opening hours, plus an interactive guide to nearby galleries in Mayfair and beyond. The real bonus, however, is that it comes with a complimentary ticket admitting two people to the fair. Presumably all you need to do is flash your iPhone at the front desk and you’re in. Who said the antiques trade was stuck in the past?

The LAPADA app contains links to illustrated previews of many of the items that will be on show. Among the jewelery we spotted a Flying Swallow brooch, circa 1925, by the Parisian firm of La Cloche Frères.

On the stand of London dealers The Gilded Lily, this tour de force of the lapidary arts combines gold, Burma rubies, emeralds and diamonds set in 18-karat gold overlaid with platinum. In a similar taste is a 1940s cabochon ruby and diamond bangle attributed to the American jeweler Paul Flato, priced at £47,000 ($74,620) on the stand of Twenty First Century Jewels. The fact that it was once owned by the Polish Art Deco painter Tamara De Lempicka will doubtless deepen its appeal among discerning collectors.

One other object that caught our eye from LAPADA’s publicity was a Victorian Chester-hallmarked silver “nef” in the form of a galleon in full sail by the German silversmith Berthold Müller.

These little contraptions used to be filled with salt and were pushed around the dinner tables of noble families. It would be interesting to know where this example — which can be seen on the stand of London Silver Vaults dealers, Langfords — might end up. Finally, among the more handsome furniture items is a Regency crossbanded amboyna wood tip-top center table in the manner of George Smith, circa 1825, which Antiques Roadshow expert Lennox Cato is offering at £24,000 ($38,000).

Regular art market watchers will already be familiar with the virtual dominance by Asian dealers of the market for imperial Chinese porcelain in recent years. Every time a significant collection of imperial wares, jades, or traditional brush paintings comes up for auction — whether in London or the provinces — one can be sure to encounter a saleroom full of mainland Chinese or Taiwanese or Hong Kong dealers. It was thus no surprise to be told by the leading art market research companies that China has become the largest art market in the world by volume of transactions. What did come as a surprise, however, was to read the investigative journalism published by Forbes that suggested that the Chinese market may be something of a hall of mirrors. Whether, as Forbes reported, the Chinese auction sector is indeed state-controlled and subject to various kinds of nefarious activity remains a moot point. What is not in doubt, however, is the fact that some of the more expensive lots hammered down in recent years in European salerooms still remain unpaid for.

Given this background and the lingering whiff of controversy surrounding the Chinese market, it was reassuring to see that London dealers Eskenazi, surely the preeminent Western purveyors of Asian art, are to stage an exhibition devoted to Qing porcelain. This will be a chance to see some of the finest examples of the sort of wares that are currently quickening the pulses of Chinese mainland collectors. Originating from a single private collection, many of the pieces

are provenanced to earlier famous collections, such as those of J.M. Chu, T.Y. Chao and Paul and Helen Bernat.

How many of these masterpieces will ultimately find their way back to China is as yet unknown, but given the levels to which Chinese collectors are prepared to go to acquire museum-quality objects, one suspects that at least some of them will soon be heading east. Eskenazi’s exhibition at their Clifford Street premises runs Nov. 1-23 and is timed to coincide with the 15th Asian Art in London event.

Founded in 1988, the 20/21 British Art Fair remains one of the most popular fairs in the London art market calendar. This year the fair marks its 25th anniversary and so one supposes there will be a celebratory atmosphere at the galleries of the Royal College of Art from Sept. 12-16. What makes the fair so enduring and popular is its unwavering focus on Modern British art. This is a sector of the market whose fortunes have fluctuated greatly in contrast with other more international categories, and yet it continues to build a passionate collecting base and prices are now rising. Among the potentially more sought-after works on sale this year is a signed lithograph, Paper Pools, by David Hockney — arguably the Royal College’s most famous alumnus — on the stand of Dominic Guerrini,

while Agnew’s will be a showing a superb example of the work of the late Keith Vaughan (1912-1978) — Man Gathering Fruit of 1948.

Cheek-by-jowl with these giants of British art is a screenprint titled No Ball Games of 2009 by the much hyped street artist Banksy, also on the stand of Dominic Guerrini.

September is always a busy month in the UK arts calendar as everyone returns from holiday to confront life’s rain-sodden realities and takes a deep breath in readiness for the Frieze onslaught. October will be even more intense this year as Frieze sits alongside its new Old Master equivalent — Frieze Masters. London Eye will be on hand to report the inaugural instalment of this groundbreaking addition to the annual fairs calendar.

Away from the capital, we always like to give a brief mention to the exhibitions staged by the Jerram Gallery in Sherborne, Dorset, chiefly on account of their unerring ability to discover lesser-known but gifted British artists. Their next exhibition, titled “The Mind’s Eye,” features new landscape and still life paintings by David Brayne and Vivienne Williams and runs from Sept. 22 to Oct. 12. The two works we illustrate here — David Brayne’s landscape titled Silver Hare,

and Vivienne Williams’s still life, Jug with Pears and Beans,

demonstrate how well matched are their individual visions and painterly techniques.

Finally, we are happy to hear from Sotheby’s spokeswoman Mitzi Mina that Sotheby’s director and star auctioneer Henry Wyndham is “currently on track for a full and rapid recovery” after sustaining injuries to his face while out shooting on the grouse moor. We wish Mr. Wyndham a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing back on the rostrum in the near future.