International

THE strength of the Irish picture market will be tested in May when Sotheby’s and Christie’s hold their annual Irish sales in London. Recent sales in Ireland indicate things look promising, and that interest is still strong Stateside was confirmed at Dennis Auction Service (10% buyer’s premium) in Stewartsville, New Jersey on March 9 sale when this early work, right, by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) came up for auction.

OFFERED as part of a March 28 sale held by Pacific Book Auctions was a set of six porcelain plaques painted by John Tenniel with characters from Alice in Wonderland.

...in Massachusetts: START your engines… there’s just time to race over to America for a chance to own one of the smartest little sports cars around.

USA: New York may boast the nation’s glitziest antiques fairs in terms of snaring top-tier collectors and socialites, but The 41st Philadelphia Antiques Show tops virtually every single fair when it comes to choice Americana and folk art. Even dealers who participate in New York’s Winter Antiques Show praise the Pennsylvania event. “It’s the best show for Americana,” says Edwin Hild of Olde Hope Antiques based in nearby Bucks County.

SWITZERLAND: A mammoth four-day mixed sale of just under 2700 lots was held in Zürich by Galerie Koller (18%/16%/12% buyer’s premium) from March 19–23. This comprised furniture, carpets, decorative arts, jewellery, clocks, fine art and books and the auctioneers felt that the results confirmed the stability of the market for material of the best quality.

A pair of ornamental blue and gold vases made by the Manufacture Impériale in St Petersburg (c.1825-30) soared to €520,000 (£335,000) at Beaussant-Lefèvre on April 10.

NAPOLEONIC MEMORABILIA (£1 = €1.62): A sale entitled L’Empire à Fontainebleau confirmed the evergreen appeal of Napoleonic memorabilia at Osenat, Fontainebleau (17.94/13.16% buyer’s premium) on March 10, where one of the last linen shirts worn by Napoleon on St Helena was offered for sale.

ITALY: Spring has been slow to bring a little sunshine to the auction world in Italy, with rather lacklustre sales for Finarte and Semenzato’s opening moves. It will remain to be seen whether the scandal that has enveloped Corbelli, majority shareholder of Semenzato and chairman of Finarte, will affect the performance of the auction houses (that are not accused of any wrongdoing) in the more important sales later in the season.

The elegant Château d’Enghien, 30 kilometres south west of Brussels, will once again play host to the Belgium ceramics fair next month, from May 1-5.

Dreesmann’s 132 lots of Dutch silver made a major input into Christie’s Amsterdam (20.825/11.9% buyer’s premium) session of his collection, accounting for five of the ten highest prices and completely selling out.

ONE of the most important oils by Irish artist Louis le Brocquy (b.1916) is to return to Ireland after spending nearly 50 years in Italy.

Keen to maximise international interest, Christie’s sold the major portion of Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann’s Old Master pictures in London on April 11.

USA: A new prestige antiques fair at Chicago’s Navy Pier next spring is just one of a series of new initiatives from one of the US Antique trade’s most energetic and dynamic figures, Leslie Hindman.

March 18 saw a specialist 575-lot Spanish sale at Numismatica Ars Classica. The coins dated from Visigothic times (mid-7th century) to the 19th century. In the absence of more detailed literature, this catalogue will be useful for collectors and dealers alike.

NEW YORK: They say that sex sells, but it would be wrong to assume this was the only attraction of this 18th century Indian illustration to the Gita Govinda, Krishna and Radha Make Love, 1775-1780, 101/8in by 61/8in (25.7cm x15.6cm).

Florida-based Dolphin Promotions launch Great Lakes Modernism at the Southfield Civic Center in suburban Detroit, Michigan, from October 18 to 20.

Japanese and Korean sales: Although only Christie’s held a Japanese and Korean auction, trade and private buyers still came to New York to bid at auction and buy Japanese and Korean works of art at the fairs and from dealers’ exhibitions.

There were auction highs and lows during New York’s March Asia week that saw Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) and Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) hosting eight sales in four days, from March 19-22.

FRANCE: FROM June 6 to 9 the inaugural Le Salon du XXeme Siecle (20th Century Design Show) will be launched at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.

Paris in late March held various attractions for art lovers outside the saleroom. Europ’Art, a new contemporary art salon (March 14-17), attracted 200 artists from 18 countries (40 of them from ‘guest nation’ Israel). The International Paris Print Fair (March 22-25) assembled 30 exhibitors from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK (Elizabeth Harvey-Lee, Flowers Graphics, Garton & Co, Sims Reed, and William Weston).