Art News

As bubonic plague ravaged seventeenth-century England, the afflicted would find a red cross painted on their door, a warning for visitors to stay out. If, on the other hand, a house had been shown mercy while the rest of the neighborhood succumbed–a matter of happenstance more than anything since no one knew the first thing about disease transmission or treatment–it was cause for decorative commemoration. 

Thomas Gainsborough’s Going to Market, Early Morning, considered a masterpiece of 18th-century British landscapes, set a new record for the artist at auction this week. Selling for  $10 million to an anonymous buyer at Sotheby’s London’s July 3 Old Master Paintings Evening Sale, the painting is one of several depictions of this subject matter.

Discover the astonishing story of a lost Titian masterpiece. Started in the mid-16th century, ‘Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter’ was unfinished when Titian died in 1576. According to several art historians, it may have been overpainted by one of his pupils because the original work was a portrait of Titian’s mistress and illicit daughter.

The Helmuth Stone Gallery in Sarasota, Florida specializes in jewelry, fine arts, and Asian antiques. An auction hosted by the gallery later this month will curate items from those categories, with more than 400 lots ranging from a private New York collection to fine art and antique collections from San Francisco and Oklahoma City. The sale will offer items such as Chinese porcelain and jade, bronze and silver jewelry, and Pre-Columbian artifacts.

Antiquities specialist Claudio Corsi looks at an ancient bronze licking dog, the rarest object from a complete hoard of Roman bronze artefacts found by metal detectorists in England in 2017. On a Bank Holiday Sunday in August 2017 two metal detectorists, with a combined 40 years’ experience, stumbled across one of the most intriguing hoards of Roman artefacts to be discovered in Britain in recent memory.

how did a portrait by one of the greatest artists of all time, of one of the most influential women of his lifetime, go unnoticed for 300 years?

After over 50 years hidden from the public view, three works by one of Britain’s greatest painters are headed to the auction block. John Constable’s (1776-1837) oil landscapes of the British countryside are some of the most famous in the genre, and his works are highly valued in his homeland and beyond.

Head of European Furniture Paul Gallois on two wildly different yet equally beautiful 18th-century desks — one made in France, the other in Germany — and the tantalising possibility that their royal owners may have written to each other from them.

Hot on the heels of last month’s record-setting auction of Claude Monet’s 1891 Meules, Sotheby’s is hoping for another big sale with his 1908 Nymphéas. Estimated to sell for $31.9-44.6 million, the canvas likely won't touch the $110.7 million record for Monet that Meules set. But water lilies, along with haystacks, are some of Monet’s most famous subjects, and with the market primed for Monet works, the sale could exceed its high estimate.

A stunning Impressionist work from Pissarro’s series of Paris paintings will be auctioned by Sotheby’s on June 19 at the auction house’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening sale.