The sale of a Fabergé imperial egg and a 15th-century triptych made headlines last year, but one of the most powerful pieces was a painting by Richard Parkes Bonington showing what he could have become, had he not died so young

A pair of comfortable Gonse chairs brought last year’s sales to a splendid end, with Old Master drawings set to star at auctions and fairs early in 2026

From George Stubbs’s golden vision of the labourer’s place in society to Ford Madox Brown’s heroically monumental celebration of manual labour, artists gave individual interpretations of work, as Michael Hall reveals

There is much to admire in Andrew Graham-Dixon’s study of Vermeer—but not its tendency to overinterpret the old master’s work “Johannes Vermeer is the most laconic of the Dutch old masters,” Andrew Gr

Your indispensable guide to the capital

Dan Sperrin State of Ridicule A history of satire in English literature 816pp. Princeton University Press. £38 (US $45). In State of Ridicule: A history of satire in English literature, Dan Sperrin ha