Market news: a big week in the world of art, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

Damien Hirst may not have bought Francis Bacon's $86 million (£44 million) triptych in New York last week, as some at first thought, but he did acquire Jeff Koons's stainless-steel sculpture Jim Beam-Box Car at Christie's for $1.9 million.

Artist Damien Hirst (left) has bought a Jeff Koons.

This may be linked to Hirst's reformed attitude to drinking. The car is filled with a fifth of bourbon, but sealed. "You can drink the bourbon," said Koons in a 1992 statement, "but if you break the seal you destroy the soul of the piece."

The three paintings by Bacon sold in New York last week totalled $119 million, making him the highest-grossing artist of the week, outstripping Andy Warhol, who came in second with $110 million for 56 works.

• Do New Yorkers have something against Banksy? At Sotheby's last week, there were cheers when the British graffiti artist's painting Sale Ends Today, estimated to fetch $600,000, failed to sell.

• A former cartoonist and graphic designer for film directors Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg had a spirited opening of his latest paintings at the Catto Gallery in north London on Sunday.

advertisementAlain Bertrand has made a series of photorealist paintings of jazz musicians and Fifties American cars. Thirteen of the paintings were swiftly sold for prices of up to £20,000 each, and several commissions were received from proud owners of vintage automobiles.

• The three Ds (death, debt and divorce) have always been important factors in the supply chain for auctions, and this week come into the spotlight when Sotheby's offers one of Edward Hicks's many versions of his American folk-art icon, The Peaceable Kingdom, with an estimate of $6 million to $8 million.

The painting belongs to beleaguered jeweller Ralph O Esmerian, who used art and jewellery as collateral to buy a jewellery business in 2005. He now reportedly owes Sotheby's $11.5 million and Christie's $7.5 million.

The sale is to satisfy the debt with Sotheby's only. The painting was originally valued at $10 million when offered for sale privately, but did not sell. "If there is a remaining debt Sotheby's will give us over a year and a half to pay them back," Esmerian says.

• Nearly 400 lots of furnishings, paintings, and objets d'art from the collection of dealer Niall Hobhouse go under the hammer at Christie's on Thursday.

The eclectic sale reflects 30 years of collecting from Anglo-Indian art to botanical and architectural drawings by the dealer whose taste was influenced from boyhood by his ancestors' role in colonial east India, and his mother Penelope Hobhouse's expertise in gardening.

Most of the works, such as a series of five early-19th-century, 6ft 6in portraits of Javanese officials (£200,000 to £300,000; one is pictured above) were kept at his family home, Hadspen House in Somerset. Hobhouse is selling because his tastes have moved on to more contemporary design.

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