Pastel

One of lots drawing a decent competition at the Adam’s sale at Slane Castle last month was a pair of chalk portraits by Robert Healy (c.1743-71).

Drawn from life at Nelson’s home, Merton, just weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, this pastel portrait by the marine artist John Whichelo sold for £52,000 at Sotheby’s.

This portrait of Sinead O’Connor as a young girl was consigned to Whyte’s sale on November 26 by the singer herself.

The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction is to go on display to the public for six months at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

THE latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York will forever be remembered as ‘The Scream’ series.

IS this the longest queue ever to view a single lot coming up at auction?

THE term ‘masterpiece’ is all too commonplace in auctioneering hyperbole, but just occasionally it rings true.

FOUND lying face down in the attic of a local house, apparently unloved, the pastel portrait of a young girl reading a book seen right was the sleeper that awoke to a six-figure bid in an April 3 sale that gave Dennis Auction Service of Stewartsville, New Jersey, their first ever $1m sale total.

ONE of the hottest Modern British names in the last few years, has been Winifrid Nicholson (1893-1981), whose half-length portrait of her husband Ben Nicholson made a record £100,000 at Lawrence’s, Crewkerne in January 2002.

Illustrated right is one of 15 chromolitho plates after pastel originals by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot that make up a scarce, complete set of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, the work of a keen observer and talented artist who spent the years 1872-74 using the 15in refractor at Harvard Observatory.