The Times - UK (2022-01-19)

the times | Wednesday January 19 2022 2GM 9

News

SOTHEBY’S

Sotheby’s

shows us

the Monets

F

irst came the

Magritte and

now comes the

Monet (David

Sanderson

writes). The art market

received another fillip

yesterday as it was

revealed that five

paintings from the

French artist are to be

sold in London in

March.

The Sotheby’s auction

will also include René

Magritte’s L’empire des

lumières which, with an

upper price tag of

£45 million, is one of the

highest estimates ever

for a work of art being

sold in Europe.

The Claude Monet

paintings, collectively

valued at about

£50 million, include a

chrysanthemum still life

and a renowned

haystack painting. These

two date from the mid-

1890s when Monet was

creating his garden at

Giverny in Normandy

where the series of

water lily paintings

would later be created.

The planned sale of

the five paintings, which

Sotheby’s said came

from an anonymous

American collector,

highlights how auction

houses have generally

weathered the

pandemic. Sotheby’s and

Phillips have reported

record revenues as the

auction houses managed

to pivot to virtual

auctions and hold

private viewings for

wealthy buyers.

While Monet was a

success in his lifetime,

he fell out of favour with

the art establishment

after his death in 1926.

It would be the

influence he had on

abstract expressionists

such as Jackson Pollock

and Willem de Kooning

in the middle of the 20th

century that would lead

to a reappraisal. He

remains a popular figure

for auction houses and

museum exhibitions.

Sotheby’s said the five

works it was selling had

been painted during a

formative 15-year period

which charted Monet’s

“pivot from an

impressionist painter to

the father of abstract

expressionism”. It said

that Massif de

chrysanthèmes, with a

£10 million to £15 million

estimate, was “almost

certainly inspired” by

the Japanese printmaker

Hokusai, as had been his

water lily series.

The highest estimate,

£20 million, is for Les

demoiselles de Giverny

featuring a collection of

“meulettes” or

haystacks. The set is

completed with Glaçons,

environs de Bennecourt,

painted in the 1890s and

valued at £5 million to

£7 million, a Normandy

coastline called Sur la

falaise près de Dieppe,

soleil couchant,

estimated at £3.5 million

to £5 million, and the

still life Prunes et

abricots, valued at up to

£1.8 million.

The five Claude Monet

paintings are expected to

sell for about £50 million

A man escaped prosecution for
murdering his wife six years before he
killed the children’s author Helen
Bailey, a court was told yesterday.
Ian Stewart “fooled” medical profes-
sionals into believing that his wife,
Diane, 47, died during an epileptic fit at
their home in June 2010, Huntingdon
crown court was told.
He then formed a relationship with
Bailey, who wrote the Electra Brown
series of books, through an internet
forum for widowed people.
Stewart, 61, killed Bailey and her dog
and dumped their bodies in a cesspit at
their home in Royston, Hertfordshire,
in 2016. He was convicted of his
fiancée’s murder in 2017, leading police
to re-examine his wife’s death.
Stewart, a former computer software
manager, was alone with his wife on the
day of her death at their home in
Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire, the

The widower of a British woman swept
to her death during the Tongan
tsunami is riddled with guilt, relatives
have said.
Angela Glover, 50, from Brighton,
became separated from her husband as
she tried to save her rescue dogs when
a wave triggered by an offshore volcan-
ic eruption hit the coastal house they
were looking after. James Glover
survived by clinging to a tree as his wife
and pets were caught in the nearly 4ft-

Author’s murderer back in court

over wife’s death six years earlier

court was told. He called an ambulance,

claiming that he had found her

unresponsive and not breathing.

The original verdict was sudden

unexplained death through epilepsy.

Stuart Trimmer QC, for the prosecu-

tion, said that a re-examination of the

cause of death had been possible

because the mother of two had donated

her brain for medical research.

Scientists and a pathologist who re-

examined the brain tissue concluded

that the death had most likely been

caused by “a prolonged restriction of

her breathing from an outside source”.

There was a one in 100,000 chance

that she had died from epilepsy, they

said, because it had been 18 years since

she had last had a seizure of note.

Trimmer said: “His explanation for

the circumstances of her death can be

disproved by the medical evidence. [It]

was most likely caused by a prolonged

restriction of her breathing.”

Stewart gave police a prepared state-

ment about his wife’s death that said:

“On that day I had left our home and

when I returned a short while later I

found Diane lying unconscious on the

patio. I went inside to get the cordless

house phone and dialled 999.”

The couple, who had met as students

at Salford University, had been arguing

in the weeks before her death. Trimmer

said: “Friends of Diane recall his

behaviour at the funeral as being

unusual.” Stewart acted strangely after

his wife’s death, the court was told, and

bought a sports car.

He became involved with Bailey in

2012. Stewart had been out of work for

16 years, the court was told, and Bailey,

who had assets worth £4 million, was

“by far and away” the wealthier.

When friends lost touch with Bailey

in April 2016, Stewart told police she

had left home as “she needed space”,

the court was told. It was later proved

that Stewart had her telephone and had

made “repeated attempts” to alter her

finances to his benefit.

Diane Stewart’s sister, Wendy Bell-

amy-Lee, told the court she had “def-

initely” had concerns about her sister’s

death. “There was an element of suspi-

cion because Ian was on his own, so I

called the coroner and said, ‘What

more can you tell me about it?’, ” she

said.

When she told Stewart about con-

tacting the coroner, she said: “He was

really, really cross with me. Then I felt

bad that I had done that... he said ‘You

don’t need to know’. ”

Stewart denies murdering his wife.

The trial continues.

David Brown

‘Child killer

identified

20 years on’

A teenager with a “grotesque interest”

in child murder was identified as the

killer of six-year-old Rikki Neave two

decades after the victim’s mother was

acquitted of the crime, the Old Bailey

was told yesterday.

James Watson, then 13, had been the

last person seen with Rikki alive but

was ruled out as a suspect because of a

“fundamental error” in the police

investigation, the court heard.

Rikki’s body was found in woodland

five minutes’ walk from his home on the

Welland estate in Peterborough, Cam-

bridgeshire, the day after he dis-

appeared in November 1994.

John Price QC, for the prosecution,

said: “He had been strangled. The body

was naked. It was lying on the ground,

flat on its back. It had been deliberately

posed by the killer, in a star shape, with

outstretched arms, and his legs placed

wide apart.”

Rikki’s mother, Ruth Neave, now 53,

who had called 999 to report him

missing, was acquitted of murder. She

admitted child cruelty to her son and

two of his sisters. Neave was wrongly

charged with murder because the

investigation gave too much weight to

numerous purported sightings of Rikki

in the latter part of the day he went

missing, the prosecutor said, when he

was already dead.

A cold case review in 2015 revealed a

DNA profile matching Watson on Rik-

ki’s clothing, the court was told. The

prosecutor said that at the time of

Rikki’s disappearance “James Watson

was exhibiting a grotesque interest in

the subject of child murder generally”.

Watson, 40, denies murder. The trial

continues.

David Brown

Husband of Briton killed in Tonga tsunami ‘blames himself ’

high waves. Angela’s body was found in

bushes on Monday by her husband

once the water had receded.

Her brother Nick Eleini told the BBC

he had since spoken to James, who, he

said, was “guilt-ridden” by her death.

Eleini said: “He’s been able to com-

municate with us via satellite phone

from the British embassy. He’s safe, he

has all his basic needs covered, he has

shelter, food, water and money.

“I don’t believe he sustained any seri-

ous injuries. He is naturally just shat-

tered and guilt-ridden as to the events

that took place. He’s quite naturally

blaming himself for not being able to

save Angela. It doesn’t matter how

many times we tell him that he has

nothing to reproach himself for. He is

carrying an incredible burden of guilt at

the moment.”

The tsunami was triggered by the

eight-minute undersea eruption of the

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano

on Saturday which has affected an esti-

mated 80,000 people in Tonga. The ex-

tent of the damage and number of casu-

alties remain unclear. Communication

to the island has been difficult after an

underwater cable was severed during

the extreme weather while scientists

have warned the volcano could erupt

again.

The Glovers had moved to Tonga in

2015, where he runs a tattoo parlour

and she founded the Tongan Animal

Welfare Society, which rehabilitated

stray dogs. Eleini had earlier said his

family would always ensure James re-

mained part of their lives, promising to

“shower him with love”.

Scale of devastation revealed, page 28

Laurence Sleator

Ian Stewart said

his wife died from

an epileptic fit