Europe

For several years, from 1902-06, the 'Oihonna', an ice-strengthened passenger ship belonging to the Finland Steamship Company, undertook regular cruises to the Norwegian archipelago of Spitzbergen.

Earlier this year the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels restituted a painting from its collection for the first time: Lovis Corinth’s (1858-1925) 'Still Life: Red and Pink Roses in a Vase on a Tablecloth (Flowers)' of 1913.

More than 1000 Old Master drawings offered in around 500 lots over two days went under the hammer of Beaussant Lefèvre (27% buyer’s premium inc VAT) at Drouot on February 10-11 when the auction firm dispersed the collection of Jacques and Colette Ulmann.

Among the eye-catchers in the general auction at Metz in Heidelberg on March 25-26 is a small, partly enamelled silver box with a gilt interior.

Among the contemporaries of André Charles Boulle, who perfected the complex form of marquetry that bears his name, was the Parisian ebeniste Nicolas Sageot.

More than 600 lots at Neumeister’s Munich sale on March 30 have been hidden from public view for 90 years, packed in wooden crates.

Kathleen Lynn can be seen very much as a modern woman of her time. The daughter of a County Mayo Church of Ireland rector, her upbringing was conservatively Protestant and Unionist but she became politically radicalised through her exposure to the poverty of Dublin’s slums while she studied medicine.

French rediscovery of a German artist’s work leads a look at the Old Masters market

Although the French inventor Charles-Xavier Thomas de Colmar introduced the first model of his calculating machine Arithmomètre in 1820, he waited some 30 years before he started producing them in series.

After training at the Art Academy in Königsberg, the German painter Theo von Brockhusen moved to Berlin in 1905.

A number of UK auction houses have stopped taking bids from buyers in Russia in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

French auction reform took another step forward last month with the creation of a new regulatory body to oversee sales in France.

The latest Covid restrictions to be eased make a buying trip across the Channel more realistic

An imposing silver gilt jug and basin by a master goldsmith of the Empire period is one of the highlights of Osenat’s L’Empire à Fontainebleau auction.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s have both announced sales from collections of famous fashion designers to be held this year.

You can always find stylish pieces at 20th century design sales held by Italian auction houses. Here are some highlights from recent sales at Wannenes in Genoa on December 15-16 and Colasanti in Rome on October 7-8.

With Brussels’ major art and antiques fair BRAFA postponed from its usual January slot until June, a group of exhibitors have got together to present a foretaste of the type of pieces on offer later in the year at Brussels Expo in galleries around the city under the title Brussels Art Walk supported by BRAFA.

A striking and well-provenanced example of an African mask from the Fang peoples of Gabon is to appear at an auction in the south of France on March 26.