A former chief librarian at a Chinese university admitted in court to stealing more than 140 paintings by grandmasters in a gallery under his watch and replacing them with fakes he painted himself.

WORKS by Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), top selling artist at auction in the world last year, will come under the hammer at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in Oct 5-9.

An extremely rare Chinese porcelain bowl fetched nearly HK$208m (€20.3m), smashing pre-sale estimates by about three times, as Sotheby’s wrapped up its season’s sale in Hong Kong.