Europe

FIVE previously unknown photographic prints by Edgar Degas totalled €380,000 (£253,335) at Beaussant-Lefèvre (20.93/11.96% buyer’s premium) on July 2. All featured group portraits taken at the Paris home of Degas’s friend, the painter Henri Lerolle (1848-1929), and were consigned by Lerolle’s descendants.

HIGHLIGHT of Sotheby’s (23.92/14.35% buyer's premium) book and manuscript sale on June 30 was Antonin Artaud’s 1947 portrait of his publisher Alain Gheerbrant, pencil, 14 x 20in (35 x 50cm), seen right, that made a double-estimate €210,000 (£140,000) to set a record for an Artaud drawing.

ATTEMPTING to tap into the burgeoning Russian market, Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) appointed Moscow-born Tatyana Barysheva as in-house specialist last year. She is gradually building up a following for sales of Russian silver, vertu and works of art.

JUST in case you are jetting down to the jetset principality of Monaco this week to catch some sun and glitter, currently there is some culture to complement the hedonism.

THE 523-lot collection of theatrical souvenirs amassed by French actor and director Jean Darnel was 89 per cent sold by value at Piasa (20.33% buyer’s premium) on June 28, en route to a premium-inclusive €247,000 (£164,665). Thirteen lots were pre-empted by the Comédie Française and nine by the Bibliothèque Nationale.

THE new international trade fair for antiques, accessories, restoration and decoration, Novum Antique, planned for September 16 to 19 at Karlsruhe, near Stuttgart, has been cancelled.

A 56-sheet sketch book by Camille Pissarro, 8 x 11in (21 x 28cm), dating from his stay in Venezuela between April and August 1854, sold for €150,000 (£100,000) at Piasa (20.33/13.16% buyer's premium) on June 18.

THE pencilled Assumption (with white highlights), 20 x 15in (50 x 37cm), shown right, turned up at Doutrebente on June 25 with a €4000 estimate.

THOMAS Rowlandson’s (1756-1827) watercolour Place des Victoires, Paris (estimated £60,000-80,000) failed to find a buyer when offered at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 1.

DAVID Teniers the Younger’s whimsical 6 x 8 1/2in (16 x 22cm), oil on copper view of Monkeys Playing Cards, sold to a private buyer against the London trade for a double-estimate €220,000 (£146,665) at Tajan on June 24.

THIS 18th century embroidered and appliqué yellow felt horse blanket, right, emblazoned with the arms of the Tighe family and their motto Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optem (Let me neither fear nor wish for the last day), was an evocative reminder of 18th century Dublin pageantry.

ANY sale overseen by Alain Weil has the potential to be interesting. His sale at the Hôtel Bergère, Paris, on June 18 was no exception. The items on offer in this 455-lot sale ranged from classical times to the distinctive medals of the Art Deco.

SWEDEN’s top summer fair Antik 2004 has its 42nd annual staging from July 27 to August 1 at the Olympia Hall in the town of Helsingborg.

THE highlight of Christie's (20.93/11.96% buyer's premium) sale on June 14 was this 16in (40cm) high Benin bronze plaque (c.1580-1620), right, featuring a warrior chief, brandishing a sceptre in his right hand and a short eben sword in his left. The plaque, formerly owned by Edgar Dimsey, a surgeon on the British punitive expedition to Benin in February 1897, retained sharp detailing and sold to a European collector for a hefty €450,000 (£300,000) against an estimate of €150,000-200,000.

THE Paris firm of Bourgey was founded in Paris in 1895. Now under the direction of the granddaughter of the founder, Sabine Bourgey, it is still going strong if the recent sale on June 3 is anything to go by.

THE widow of Baron Heini von Thyssen, the billionaire art collector, has loaned a huge new collection to the museum he founded in Madrid, the Thyssen Bornemisza.

SEVERAL times a year Teutoburger Münzauktion have a long sale, mostly containing fairly low-priced items of great diversity. Much of it is of Germanic interest. On May 21 and 22 they offered 4921 lots.

CONTENTS sales dominated the early May auction action in Belgium, and there were two more held in France later in the month. These were very different affairs – one offering an array of recently acquired furniture and objets d’art, the other being more in the “family heirloom” category.

BIDDING was noticeably selective at Adam's (15/12.5% buyer's premium) May 19 outing, with an unusually high unsold rate by lot and relatively little to tempt buyers in the pictures, silver and ceramics sections. Furniture, and particularly Irish furniture, was a different matter, with wealthy Irish private buyers battling with both the home and London trade for a handful of high-quality pieces, coming fresh to market from different local sources.

AN auction of the most comprehensive collection of the ancient coins of Olympia in the year that Athens hosts the modern Olympic Games is likely to meet with very considerable success.