Monet's Venetian view to make auction debut, estimated at £20-30 million

Claude Monet arrived in Venice on 1 October 1908 – and, taken aback by the splendour of what he saw, the artist declared the city ‘too beautiful to paint’. Enchanted by the city, Monet painted just under forty canvases during the course of his three month stay, the greater part of which adorn the walls of museums across the globe. This spectacular painting depicts the historic Gothic façade of the Doge’s palace, and it belongs to a celebrated group of three works painted from the vantage of a boat moored along the canal, one of which is held in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Helena Newman, Worldwide Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department & Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, said: ‘This spellbinding painting is a true masterpiece and among the very greatest Monet painte

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Caren Garfen: From conception to creation

Caren Garfen is known for tackling tough topics. She juxtaposes seemingly simple textiles with complex issues like eating disorders to create compelling and informative installation art. Caren’s art does not hang neatly on a wall. Instead, she creates provocative examinations of issues that especially affect women.

Her latest installation art called ‘Room for Improvement’ is a classic example that exposes the overwhelming disparity between the need for and availability of services related to eating disorders in the UK. This ‘From conception to creation’ article gives you an inside look at how that work came to life, as well as introduces you to the considerations and techniques that go into ‘installation art’ in general.

Caren’s work has been exhibited widely in the UK and Europe, as well as Japan, United States, Canada and Australia. She recently received the prestigious Textile Society Development Award and has been a member of The 62 Group of Textile Artists since 2008.

Name of piece: Room for Improvement

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Ann Vollum: Finding freedom in stitching

Ann Vollum has been an artist for as long as she can remember. As a child, she loved to paint and make things from felt and fur.

But, although she had a yearning to study textile design, the adults in Ann’s life had different ideas.

Her teachers (at what she describes as a ‘horrendous and very snooty boarding school in England’) did not consider anything other than architecture a worthy pursuit for girls who showed an aptitude for the visual arts. And her mother was terrified that an art degree would lead to a life of poverty.

So, having been taught from an early age to tread the conventional path, Ann conformed and went to study Architecture at Newcastle University. She was ill-suited to the subject and ended up learning to be a graphic designer and art director on the job instead. Alongside this career, Ann continued to create art; painting in oil and acrylic, drawing in ink, combining the ink drawing with painted backgrounds.

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Artemis Gallery to donate all of Dec. 25 antiquities auction's proceeds to charity

Artemis Gallery will conduct a Holiday Charity Auction and donate 100 percent of the sales total – or a minimum donation of $25,000 – to Community Food Share. The organization’s mission is to eliminate hunger in Colorado’s Boulder and Broomfield Counties. This special online auction of more than 200 lots of ancient and ethnographic art will take place Tuesday, Dec. 25. Each item boasts impeccable provenance and is offered with the gallery’s unconditional guarantee that it is authentic and legal to purchase, own, and if desired, resell.

One of the many auction highlights is an Egyptian faience overseer ushabti from the Third Intermediate Period, 21st to 25th Dynasty. The mummiform figure wears a tripartite wig while holding two picks and a seed bag across the back. The top hieroglyph, that of an ox tongue, signifies that this shabti was designated as an overseer, perhaps to monitor the other workers w

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Argentina puts 65-million-year-old dinosaur replica on display

Argentine paleontologists unveiled on Wednesday the replica of a 65-million-year-old skeleton of a plesiosaur marine reptile found in a Patagonian lake in 2009. “We’ve been working since 2009 until now to liberate the fossil from the rock surrounding it, making a reproduction and hanging it here in the museum hall,” paleontologist Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Science Museum in Buenos Aires told AFP. The fossil is of a marine reptile found in Cretaceous period rocks close to the southern town of El Calafate, 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles) from Buenos Aires. The remains of this plesiosaur are the most complete found in Argentina and were discovered in rocks submerged in Lake Argentino at the foot of the Andes mountains. “It was around 50 centimeters (1.64 feet) under the water and part of the lake had to be drained to take out the rocks,” said scientist Marcelo Isasi. Four tons of rocks had to be removed to unearth the fossil remains, found just 500 meters (1,640 fe

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