Europe

Among the raft of dedicated works on paper auctions staged for the recent Drawings Week in Paris were two market-fresh sales devoted to family collections of works by a single French artist.

An audacious robbery in Amsterdam has left a dealer without insurance cover for the theft of more than 250 Asian works of art.

Christie’s is to appeal last month’s French court ruling that declared Droit de Suite is a charge on the vendor rather than the buyer.

Numerous bidders competed for a5½in (14cm) high Japanese incense burner from the Meiji period (1868-1912) at a sale held by Hargesheimer (25% buyer’s premium) in Dusseldorf on March 10-11.

One thing you could never accuse General George S Patton of was being shy. Not that top military men are exactly shrinking violets but even so, Patton is renowned as particularly bombastic. He fits perfectly into the type of American general in the Custer and MacArthur mould, happy to blow their own trumpets.

Published in New York in 1977, The Vanished World Portfolio is a selection of a dozen photographs from the very many that were taken in the late 1930s in Cracow, Warsaw, the Carpathian regions and elsewhere in eastern Europe by Roman Vishniac (1897-1990).

Hans Christian Andersen did not confine himself to the fairy tales that are his principal and lasting legacy.

A French Old Master drawing, a 20th century work by a specialist animal painter and an American Abstract Expressionist work were among the pictures that have performed strongly in auctions across the German regions and in Austria recently.

A 50 ducat medal commemorating the end of the Russo-Persian war was worth far more than its weight in gold at Künker (23% buyer’s premium) in Osnabruck in the March 13-17 sale.

Daniel Quare (1648-1724) is primarily known as a clock and watchmaker. He was, however, also an accomplished maker of portable barometers, one of which came up for sale at Dorotheum (25/22/15% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on March 29.

With this year marking the centenary of the sculptor’s death, Auguste Rodin is much in the news. While the Grand Palais in Paris is marking the event with a major exhibition, Fraysse et Associés sold a 2ft 1in (64cm) high lifetime cast bronze figural group for €1.55m (£1.35m) at Drouot on March 22.

Technology has replicated the Dutch master’s work in a move the artist might have welcomed.

The Flemish Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) studied the works, and particularly the mythological scenes, of the Italian masters.

The way Droit de Suite is applied in France was affirmed by a French court ruling last month.

Filling much of a full-page advertisement in ATG No 2284 for the Pierre Bergé/Sotheby’s (24/20.5/17% buyer’s premium) sale in Paris on April 26 of books and manuscripts from the library of Jean A Bonna was the star turn – a stunning copy of Galileo’s Discorsi et Dimostrazioni matematiche of 1638.

For many centuries the German city of Nuremberg was a major centre for glass decoration.

Rudolf Neumeister, one of Germany’s longest serving auctioneers, passed away on February 23 at the age of 91.

From minimalist lamp to starry chandelier

Paris art and design fair PAD has lost its vetting committee following concerns about the brief time allowed to view stands.