Europe

The multi-talented Belgian designer and architect Henry van de Velde spent many of his most productive years in the east German city of Weimar, where he lived and worked from 1899-1917.

Although he was rejected by the Berlin art academy, Eduard Hildebrandt, who was born in Danzig in 1818, went on to become one of the most celebrated landscape painters of his time. He was without doubt one of the most widely travelled.

A family collection of faience ceramics attracted worldwide interest at auction in Zurich

As Paris Photo (November 12-15) prepares to welcome collectors from around the world, Christie’s is offering more than 350 photographs from the Roger Therond Collection across three sales taking place in Paris on November 13-14, and online from November 6-17.

Former Christie’s and Sotheby’s generalist John Hudson* travelled to Braderie De Lille, the annual event on the first weekend in September. Here he shares his daytrip diary and experiences

French neoclassicist Marie Guilhelmine Benoist (1768-1826) is another of the long-overlooked female artists whose work is being reappraised by the market in the 21st century.

Portrait miniatures by the renowned British artist face a different and difficult modern mindset

Neumeister (25% buyer’s premium), a stalwart of the German auction market, held its last auction in Munich this summer.

For over 300 years, 12 generations of the Liechti family in the northern Swiss town of Winterthur built clocks.

In retrospect, it was a blessing for Victor-Gabriel Gilbert (1847-1935) that his parents did not have the money to finance his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Toy specialist Lankes (25% buyer’s premium) in the small Bavarian town of Döhlau could harvest a bumper crop of good results during its sale of July 20-24.

Hargesheimer (25% buyer’s premium) in Düsseldorf devoted an auction to the sale of 61 works of art from the collection of a couple from Wiesbaden who had spent many decades amassing sculptures and old master paintings.

Scheublein (27% buyer’s premium) offered 1000 lots from the collection of a branch of the Bavarian royal family this summer.

Bidders from as far afield as Saudi Arabia vied for an ancient Egyptian bronze of the deity Osiris at Kunst & Kuriosa (21% buyer’s premium) in Heidelberg.

The prosaic description ‘flute stopper’ hardly does justice to the function and ritual importance of the carved wooden artefact sold by Lempertz (27% buyer’s premium).