The former CIA agent arrested in the United States earlier this week on suspicion of helping Chinese spies was a security guard at Christie’s in Hong Kong, the auction house said Thursday. Hong Kong resident Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a naturalised US citizen also known as Zhen Cheng Li, was arrested late Monday after he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York. His arrest was reportedly linked to Beijing’s brutal dismantling five years ago of the CIA’s network of undercover operatives and informants inside China. When asked whether Lee, 53, had worked at Christie’s, the auction house said they had suspended a Hong Kong employee pending a criminal investigation, without naming him.

In a gesture of abiding friendship, or perhaps a subtle act of diplomatic trolling, French President Emmanuel Macron will offer to loan Britain the famed Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the French conquest of England, during his visit to the UK on Thursday. The 40-year-old French leader likes to accompany his diplomacy with symbolic moves and gifts as he sets about trying to restore France’s international prestige. On a trip to Beijing, he offered the Chinese president a French stallion, while Russian leader Vladimir Putin was given a tour around an exhibition at the Versailles Palace last year that marked 300 years of Franco-Russian friendship. In Britain on Thursday, Macron will offer to transport the 70-metre-long (230-foot) Bayeux Tapestry to Britain for the first time, in an unprecedented and technically difficult journey for the priceless thousand-year-old artwork. “It will not be before 2020 because it’s an extremely fragile cultural treasure which will be subject to major restoratio

Art lovers are in for a rare treat as four forgotten works by Dutch masters Vincent van Gogh and 17th-century painter Govert Flinck have gone on display, after gathering dust for more than 100 years. The works include a never-before-seen Van Gogh drawing, which had been in private hands until now. Called “The Hill of Montmartre with Quarries”, Van Gogh’s monochrome artwork dates from 1886 when he was living in Antwerp and Paris, where he worked at the studio of leading French historical painter Fernand Cormon. The sketch, together with a second drawing “The Hill of Montmartre,” were unveiled Tuesday at an exhibition at the Singer Laren museum in central Netherlands. “Such a discovery is always great. It’s really exceptional and does not often happen,” Teio Meedendorp, senior researcher for the Amsterdam-based Van Gogh Museum, told AFP.

A masterpiece by one of the world’s most famous painters will go on show at Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Cumbria. Claude Monet’s Haystacks: Snow Effect, is being displayed at the Gallery in Kendal from Friday 12 January until Saturday 28 April. The painting, dated 1891, is from a series of work widely regarded as among Monet’s best and is loaned from the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. Monet, a founder of French impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement’s philosophy produced over 30 haystacks paintings. He worked at different times of day and season to capture the affect changing light had on their form. The arrival of the Monet painting cements Abbot Hall’s commitment to show work by iconic international artists and comes at a time of growth for the Gallery. Lakeland Arts recently