Bonhams has announced that it has taken a market leadership in UK sales for several collecting categories including jewellery, watches, antiquities, arms and armour, Japanese art, ceramics, clocks and glass. These areas now join collector’s cars, a special passion of chairman Robert Brooks, in which Bonhams has long held sway. Sotheby’s countered by saying it does not hold sales in these areas in any significant way; Bonhams is the only auction house to hold specialised portrait miniature sales, for instance. Sotheby’s abandoned antiquities sales in London in 1997, and, like Christie’s, holds it major jewellery sales in Geneva. However, as Brooks says, Sotheby’s still had market leadership for UK sales of jewellery until last year, when Bonhams achieved £13.5 million in sales to overtake them. According to Bonhams’ figures, it also has virtual monopoly of the watch and glass markets.

January has often been the month when Christie’s country-house sale department comes up with some choice offerings, and this month sees the tradition continue with the contents of Newton Hall, Northumberland, transferred to South Kensington for sale tomorrow. The Widdrington family of Newton are recorded as far back as the 12th century as a powerful land-owning gentry associated with Northumberland. Newton Hall was built in 1772, and the sale of its contents follows the death of Captain Francis Newton Heron Widdrington in 2008. Among the furnishings and silver are a rare group of four equestrian portraits by Thomas Stringer, who worked among the landed gentry of Cheshire in the 18th century (estimates from £7,000 to £15,000). Some are not signed but identifiable through Stringer’s habit of inscribing the sitter’s name on a tablet or rock in the corner of the canvas, or of painting his grooms standing with legs crossed.

As the London Art Fair closed on Sunday afternoon, dealers were mostly upbeat about the level of sales that had taken place. Scottish picture specialist Duncan Miller sold more than 30 paintings, mostly by young contemporary artists, while Stephen Paisnel counted a dozen sales of works by established post-war British artists including a large Alan Davie painting from the early Sixties priced at £120,000. Richard Green was also happy to have made as many sales from his stock of Mary Fedden, Edward Seago, Ken Howard et al. Best-selling artist of the fair, however, was Peter Blake, who was showing hand-coloured screenprints and diamond-dust portraits of Andy Warhol through print publisher Paul Stolper. Nearly 50 of his prints were sold with prices between £1,000 and £2,000 each.

A sad note in the second part of Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art on February 11 should touch the heart of even the hardest of dealers. Included in the sale are a handful of works from the estate of Angus Fairhurst, the young British artist who committed suicide in 2008. The majority of works are gifts from his former girlfriend Sarah Lucas, with estimates ranging from £8,000 to £40,000. Fairhurst was part of the original group of YBAs, along with Damien Hirst, Lucas and Gary Hume, who mounted the groundbreaking East End warehouse exhibition, Freeze, in 1988, but, though highly respected, never achieved the same degree of success as his peers. CG