Our pick of the highlights from coming fairs and auctions

The latest China Art & Wealth White Paper found that domestic annual sales dropped by 20% to $6.2bn last year, due to Covid-19 controls, but recovered quickly later in the year

My trip to Munich's Alte Pinakothek was worth the multiple levels of Covid-related admin

Sarah Biffin was an accomplished miniaturist who was so famous in her lifetime Charles Dickens referred to her in three novels

The star of the sales was a pair of half-length portraits by Van Dyck that sold for £6.2m at Sotheby's, the second-highest price for the artist at auction

The firm is buying the London-based books and works on paper specialist Forum Auctions—it previously bought Dreweatts and Bloomsbury for £1.25m in 2017

The work, consisting of 83 child-size figures in concrete and wood, was made in the late 1990s and has been exhibited on the roof of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid

The painting was consigned to China Guardian’s first Impressionist and Modern art sale by Lévy Gorvy gallery

New York's "gigafortnight" sales of the Cox and Macklowe collections showed there is still a market for classics—even while a Beeple sells for $29m to a tweeting tech entrepreneur

Our pick of the works coming up for sale in London and Munich

The real-estate tycoon, a key patron of Zeng, has not been seen since she was "disappeared"—the painting, Prayer, is now described by Poly auctions as "entrusted by an important institution"

The specialist New York auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's made $28.9m and $14.2m respectively

Highlights include a platinum diamond ring and his signature white silk cape

The larger than life-size statue was brought back from Rome by the Duke of Hamilton in the 18th century and is named after his Scottish palace

Plus, Fabergé in London and a rediscovered Dürer

The auction house also accepted cryptocurrency on two works by Banksy and sold a rare copy of the US Constitution for $41m

The 20th century and contemporary art evening sale saw stiff competition for works by Shara Hughes, Joan Mitchell, Amy Sherald and Cecily Brown

While the auction's star lots included the $34.9m Kahlo and four Monets, the most aggressive bidding was on works by Alexander Calder and Pierre Soulages

Bidders from Asia snapped up the sale’s two biggest lots, trophy works by Giacometti and Rothko

For the artist who failed to sell during his lifetime, there is now a surge in the market for Vincent’s late paintings

Last night's single-owner sale of the late Texan oilman's vaunted collection brought in a massive $332m

Only five of the 59 lots went unsold in the auction last night

The auction house made Banksy's world record for the pre-shredded work Love is in the Bin

Our pick of the works coming up for sale in Paris, New York and Rome

All lots sold and records were set for ten artists, including Peter Doig, Stanley Whitney, Xinyi Cheng and Nicolas Party at last night's confidence-boosting 21st-century evening auction

The oil sketch, Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, has never appeared at auction before and is expected for sell for between £2m to £3m this December in London

Phillips and Maak Contemporary Ceramics will jointly sell the collection of the late John Driscoll on 10 November, including works by Lucie Rie, Bernard Leach and Hamada Shoji

Vincent’s picture of wheatstacks is coming up at Christie’s on 11 November—yours for around $25m

Will the wave of young Asians buying hot young artists also wash into the higher-priced, blue-chip artists on offer in New York, or has older art lost its charm?

Portraits of Stan Lee, a Marvel comic book writer and publisher, will be auctioned as NFTs on the Mogul platform