TORONTO.- Lust. Passion. Murder. Many of the greatest artists of the 19th century shared a profound fascination with the theatre and its themes of triumph and destruction, love and despair. This summer, the Art Gallery of Ontario gives centre stage to key artworks by these artists in a major international exhibition titled Drama and Desire: Artists and the Theatre, opening June 19 and continuing through September 26. Conceived by Guy Cogeval, president of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the exhibition includes over 100 paintings, drawings and theatrical maquettes, by masters such as Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Jacques-Louis David, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, William Blake, Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Édouard Vuillard. The works were selected from the collections of some of the world’s greatest museums, including the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay, the British Museum,

LONDON.- A table designed by Diego Giacometti sold for £106,000 at Bonhams , New Bond Street today (10 March 2010), as part of its Post War and Contemporary Art and Design sale. Entitled Table Torsade, and cast circa 1965, it had belonged to the late English actor James Mason (1909-1984) since the late1960s. Austrian painter Arnulf Rainier’s Der Psychiatrist likewise far surpassed its estimate of £8,000 – 12,000, selling for a remarkable £54,000. Following a fierce bidding battle, David Hockney’s Richard Neville Naked sold for £27,600. The picture was used, alongside drawings of Neville’s co-editors of Oz magazine, Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis, to raise funds for the Oz obscenity trial in 1971, in which Neville, Anderson and Dennis were prosecuted for publishing a sexual Rupert Bear cartoon parody in an issue of the magazine edited by a group of school kids. Other lots hotly contended for included Banksy

LONDON – The highly acclaimed exhibition of 16th- and 17th-century Italian art in the Royal Collection comes to Scotland in two parts in 2008 and 2009. It celebrates the artistic legacy of the Stuart kings, Charles I and his son, Charles II, whose taste profoundly influenced the character of the British Royal Collection.

LONDON – The highly acclaimed exhibition of 16th- and 17th-century Italian art in the Royal Collection comes to Scotland in two parts in 2008 and 2009. It celebrates the artistic legacy of the Stuart kings, Charles I and his son, Charles II, whose taste profoundly influenced the character of the British Royal Collection.

LONDON.- Sotheby’s announced that on Wednesday, July 14, 2010, it will present for sale, in its New Bond Street galleries in London, An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection. The single-owner sale of some 250 lots will have at its heart an exquisite group of 18th and 19th century British Watercolours and Drawings and Portrait Miniatures, which ranks as one of the finest collections of its kind to have come to the market in recent memory. Magnificent Regency furniture will also be offered alongside English sculpture, vertu, clocks, ceramics, glass, silverware, design, books, manuscripts, rugs, and extends to prize winning steam model trains. The sale, which will be on exhibition at Sotheby’s London from July 10-14, is expected to bring in excess of £4 million. An exceptional depth of knowledge, together with an insistence on the highest quality, informed the purchase of each and every piece in the