Europe

THERE was another vast sale (2180 lots) in Osnabruck held by F.R. Kuenker (15% buyer’s premium) on September 27-28. It was the classical collection of Professor Dr Hagen Tronnier that had clearly been formed over a very long time and there were many pieces which had not been available for general study for ages. This factor resulted in some higher than expected prices.

DELVAUX and Redon were among eight artists granted solo exhibitions at Jacob’s Bateau Lavoir gallery in Rue de Seine between 1960 and 1986, along with James Ensor, Charles Filiger, Bernadette Kelly, Pierre Klossowski, Marie Laurencin, and Paul Wunderlich – all represented at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium), notably Filiger with 13 lots, and Ensor with eight.

THE Mira Jacob Collection sale at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium) included a smattering of drawings and watercolours by artists outside the dealer’s sphere of influence – from a small Picasso ink sketch of a Glass and Jar, bought in at €44,000, to a Degas pencil portrait of Thérèse Degas, 11 x 8 1/2in (28 x 22cm), which sold at a quadruple-estimate €77,000 (£52,400).

POLICE have alerted dealers across Ireland to a cache of antiques stolen in a weekend raid at the home of Lord Henry Mountcharles on his Slane Castle estate in County Meath.

TWO diamonds with a reported value of nearly £8m were were stolen from the Chopard stand at the Paris Biennale.

THIS year’s Monte-Carlo International Fine Art & Antiques Fair, scheduled to run December 31-January 6 at the Grimaldi Forum, has been cancelled.

THE Venini factory of Venice are to meet with their lawyers this week to discuss stepping up legal action against the family of Italian glass designer Fulvio Bianconi.

PICTURED right is one of Nicolaas Johannes Roosenboom’s (1805-1880) classic winter landscapes, The Pleasure Trip: Elegant figures on Ice, which made €9000 (£6000) at Christie’s Amsterdam (23.205/11.9% buyer’s premium) Pictures Watercolours and Drawings sale on September 1. The signed oil on panel was 23in x 2ft 4in (58 x72cm).

This rare silk and bullion embroidered doll’s or child’s dress from the first half of the 18th century will be offered at auction on September 27.

THE ebullient Samuel Boscher (16.74% buyer’s premium) was in typically sonorous form for his annual two-day summer jamboree in Cherbourg on August 8/9.

CARAYOL'S (19.73/16.14% buyer’s premium) annual two-day sale at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz was staged this year in collaboration with Paris firm Boisgirard & Associés. With muted success; only a quarter of the 800 lots found takers for a hammer total of around €400,000 (£265,000).

SWITZERLAND hosts a new international fair later this year with the launch of The Basel Ancient Art Fair from November 12 to 17 at the historic Wenkenhof, just outside the city of Basel.

OVERLAPPING with the start of the Biennale (September 15-19) will be the third annual Parcours des Mondes, a Left Bank gallery trail featuring 50 tribal art dealers.

JUST a taster for one of the greatest antiques shows on earth, the XX11 Paris Biennale Des Antiquaires, which will run at the Carrousel du Louvre in the heart of the French capital from September 15 to 28, with the vernissage on September 14.

SCULPTURE, which accounted for a quarter of Tajan's (20.33% buyer's premium) August 3-4 sale, fared better than the pictures, with two thirds of the 18 lots finding a taker, although Le Créateur, a small Rodin bronze that began proceedings, fell stone dead – bought in at €15,000 against an estimate of €20,000-30,000.

THE three-session, 630-lot jewellery section of Tajan's (20.33% buyer's premium) August 3-4 sale, with a chirpy attendance of 80-100 throughout, met a more convincing response than the Modern art, bringing €2.7m (£1.8m) hammer, including an aftersale €145,000 (£96,670) for a grey-gold ring with a fancy yellow, rectangular 29.57-carat diamond (estimate €200,000-250,000).

JACQUES Tajan is set to quit Tajan S.A., the firm he founded in 1994, over disagreements with the firm’s new owner Rodica Seward.

EIGHT market-fresh female bronzes by Aristide Maillol, ranging in height from 8-12in (20-30cm) and designed between 1896 and 1905, surfaced in the Binoche (20% buyer’s premium) saleroom on July 2.

THE June 11 Aguttes (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale was dominated by late 19th century pictures, including this 1891 Venetian Conversation, seen right, 2ft 5in x 3ft 4in (73 x 1.01m), by American artist Julius Leblanc Stewart (1855-1919), who often painted Venetian scenes – Kaiser Wilhelm II acquired his Sirocco Effects in 1895. The work here claimed a handsome €85,000 (£56,665).

EARLY bookings for Antiquaris Barcelona suggest that next year’s 29th annual staging of one of Spain’s top fairs will be markedly more international than it was earlier this year.