Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux (1894-1996)

During her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II happily opened the Royal Collection to researchers and the public, doing more in this regard than any of her predecessors.

When the Covid pandemic settled over Manhattan, New Yorkers took solace in Central Park, the 843-acre green oasis. Finding respite from the hardships of confinement, they were perhaps unaware that this public sanctuary was saved from almost irreversible ruin thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Elizabeth Rogers.

A seven-foot-tall limestone statue depicting the queen in her robes of the Order of the Garter now sits in a niche at the York Minster Cathedral in England. It was the first portrait ever completed by the stonemason responsible for the work – Richard Bossons. He was previously a specialist in gargoyles. (ArtNews)

The manuscript, which is made up of nine roundels, formed part of a gift from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker to Elizabeth I in the early 1550s. The roundels were likely folded and stored in a now-lost gold salt cellar. Valued at £9,450, the export ban is in effect until December 1st of this year. 

Catlett’s 1962 carved mahogany sculpture Seated Woman broke the late artist’s auction record in New York yesterday, selling for $389,000 as the top lot of the African-American Fine Art auction. The auction also more than doubled Young’s record, his 1972 painting Untitled (Abstract Composition) achieving $233,000.

Elizabeth Dee was named director of newly founded John Giorno Foundation. Based in New York, the foundation is dedicated to the legacy of American artist, poet and activist John Giorno, who died last year. The foundation equally seeks to support poets, artists, musicians and the Nyingmapa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

The mirror that belonged to John Dee, a 16th-century polymath and astrologer for the Queen of England, is formed from obsidian that came from modern-day Mexico. Obsidian held spiritual, medicinal and protective purposes for the Aztecs. How Dee came into possession of such an object unknown. (Antiquity)

The manuscript, featuring corrections from her sister Charlotte and mentioned in an 1850 preface to Wuthering Heights, goes up for sale in a collection compiled by Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte’s widower. Also in the collection is the family’s copy of A History of British Birds, mentioned in Jane Eyre. (The Guardian)

Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth (ca. 1540), acquired by the L.A. museum from a private collector, twins the National Gallery’s Virgin and Child with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist; it is thought to represent the scene at dawn due to its more vibrant colouring.

The collector couple created one of the world's most important collections of African-American art and cultural heritage, bequeathed in part to the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia. Three exceptional letters from their collection are presented in Paris, at the Pantheon.