Europe

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

ATG’s parent company, ATG Media, has agreed to provide the technology for the first live internet bidding site in Germany.

THE Greek courts have agreed not to pursue dealer Malcolm Hay any further pending his appeal against his conviction for trading in stolen antiquities.

GIORGIO Corbelli, president of Italian auction house Finarte, has been given a 20-month jail sentence on charges related to financial dishonesty.

LAPADA chief executive Sarah Percy-Davies has made significant inroads into the Russian domestic market on behalf of British dealers as part of an official British trade delegation.

SPEAKING to ATG at the end of last week, London Old Master dealer Johnny Van Haeften still had not actually seen the monumental painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) for which he paid 6.1m euros (£5.65m) at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna on April 21.

A LONG-lost array of paintings, prints, books and drawings owned by legendary art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) will be one of the talking points of the Paris summer season when it goes on sale at Sotheby’s on June 29.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.

IF the mood at the opening of the TEFAF Maastricht fair on March 11 was tempered with a note of caution, this was dramatically heightened after a power cut plunged the halls into complete darkness just as the vernissage was getting underway.

Five months after ATG revealed the reattribution of La Bella Principessa to Leonardo da Vinci, the man who spotted it is ready to unveil another major find.

SOTHEBY’S staged the most lucrative art sale ever in the Netherlands on March 8 when they offered a 161-lot selection of contemporary art from the corporate collection of British American Tobacco.

A DEALER who says his career has been ruined by trumped-up charges in the Greek courts has been arrested again – even though he is currently appealing against the conviction and three-year jail sentence.

EBAY’s legal fortunes continue to seesaw, with a Paris court ordering them to pay 230,000 euros to Louis Vuitton Malletier in costs and damages.

LAPADA are hoping to tap directly into the luxury goods market during a special trade mission to Moscow next month.

Faced with the biggest crisis in its history, the Hôtel Drouot, the central Paris auction venue, has announced sweeping changes to how it is run.

INTERNATIONAL Coin Exchange, a new firm of Dublin-based auctioneers, will hold their first sale on February 19.

BLOOMSBURY Auctions and Dreweatts have announced an alliance with Hermann Historica, the German specialist auctioneers in arms, armour and militaria.

IN a year dominated by Christie’s blockbuster 342m euros (£308m) sale of the Bergé/St-Laurent Collection, most Paris auctioneers reported a fall in sales averaging around 20 per cent. There were, however, signs of confidence returning to the market.