France

LAST month, 14 notebooks containing the gruesome diaries of Anatole Deibler, France’s last public executioner, were sold in Paris at Beaussant-Lefèvre (17.94% buyer’s premium) for €85,000 (£55,600).

APART from sporadic themed sales held by provincial auctioneers, Camard’s main rival on the French poster auction scene is the Paris-based dealer Frédéric Lozada, who has instituted regular 1000-lot sales in Versailles (the one in late October brought over £250,000) and, most recently, in Lille, where he offered 1120 lots under the Wattebled hammer on December 11-12.

Luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault finally abandoned his attempt to compete with Christie’s and Sotheby’s at the top end of the art market last week when he sold his remaining 27.5 per cent stake in troubled auction house Phillips to its joint chief executives Simon de Pury and Daniella Luxembourg.

A full-length Plains Cree Indian male costume from Saskatchewan River in Canada, consisting of a moose-hide shirt, pair of bottom tab leggings, and pair of soft-soled moccasins, sold for €130,000 (£83,300) at Millon & Associés (17.5/13.5% buyer’s premium) on December 2.

CHRISTIE’S have unveiled some major changes for their 20th century decorative arts policy in Europe. The auction house have closed their King Street department and are concentrating all their London activities in decorative arts at South Kensington. They also want to develop and raise the profile of this field in France with regular dedicated auctions in Paris under specialist Sonja Ganne.

LAUNCHED next September, a new biennial fair organised by France’s national dealers’ association, the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, will be called Le Salon du Collectionneur – Paris.

One of the 2003 saleroom highlights in Paris promises to be the auction of the Collection of André Breton (1896-1966). The 5000-lot collection, consigned by Breton’s daughter and granddaughter, is expected to bring around £20m and will be sold in 24 sessions under the Calmels-Cohen hammer at Drouot from April 1-18.

Tajan, who have made cartoons and comic strips into a saleroom speciality, claimed a saleroom first on November 30: a pioneering opportunity for fans of Lucky Luke, the self-styled “poor lonesome cowboy”, to buy an original plate by his artist Morris.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s failed to establish saleroom predominance in Paris in 2002, the first full year in which, thanks to France’s recent auction reform, they have been allowed to stage auctions on French soil.

François Curiel, head of Christie’s France, has set a precedent by winning permission to direct sales in France. It is the first time that the Conseil des Ventes, France’s auction watchdog, has authorised anyone who has not passed the traditional commissaire-priseur’s exams to hold the gavel.

This tiled panel advertising Champagne Mercier was one of a rare ensemble of six panels made in the early 1920s, each 5ft 9in x 2ft (174 x 62cm), on offer under the Prunier hammer in Louviers (14.95% buyer’s premium) on November 17. The other tiled panels, accompanied by two landscape friezes, also advertised drinks (Rhum Negrita, St Raphaël, Guillot Triple Sec, Quenot Dijon cassis, Fine Legrand cognac), and were marked G.F.C. France for Gilardoni Fils & Compagnie of Choisy-le-Roi, near Paris.

A new French nationwide auction grouping, Ivoire, was officially launched in Paris on November 21. The group includes auctioneers from three major cities (Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse) and nine other provincial towns (Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Cannes, Chartres, Clermont-Ferrand, La Rochelle, Rheims, Saumur and Troyes).

The 12th specialist textiles sale under the Rossini (17.342% buyer’s premium) hammer at Drouot on October 9 attracted keen trade interest, with 76 per cent of the 550 lots sold, yielding a hammer total of some €430,000 (£270,000).

GIVEN the fiscal disadvantages involved, Christie’s and Sotheby’s won’t usually be looking to Paris as a venue for sales of Modern art, but Christie’s (buyer’s premium 20.93%) had a modest French Collection of Post-Impressionist & Modern Paintings and Drawings on offer on September 28 that fared well enough, with 40 lots from 43 sold for a hammer total of €1.04m (£650,000) with seven per cent bought in by lot and just two per cent by value.

Presented with individual estimates of €35,000-50,000, two male and female Urhobo figures – just as large as the Urhobo figure sold at Sotheby’s, and possibly a matching pair – were the chief casualties at the mixed-provenance sale of African art (principally from Nigeria) assembled by Marie-Catherine Daffos and Jean-Luc Estournel for Lombrail-Teucquam (buyer’s premium 15%) at Drouot on the afternoon of September 30.

Glittering personalities from the world of arts, they were the toast of Paris in the late 1960s. Capote and Sagan, Karajan and Nureyev, Callas and Saint-Laurent – their presence at soirées was coveted by the self-regarding hostesses across town, but they all paid homage to the ultimate hostess trolley when they arrived for dinner at 10 rue de Dragon.

Asian Biennale: Running alongside the main Biennale for six days last month and providing an alternative Asian focus to the glitter of French furniture, jewels and Art Deco at the Carrousel du Louvre was a new venture. The Biennale des Arts Asiatiques, organised by the Association des Specialistes d’Art Asiatiques, was a Salon of 22 specialist dealers set in a marquee at the other end of the Tuileries Gardens, which ran from September 21-25.

BELGIAN dealer and international interior designer Axel Vervoordt made a big splash in Paris during the 21st Biennale, but although he had a stand at the grand fair his real showstopper was outside in a 44 metre industral barge moored on the opposite bank of the Seine facing the Carrousel du Louvre.

FRENCH auction laws may have been reformed, but monopolies still exist, as Christie’s have just found to their cost.

THIS 75 per cent-complete shell of the extinct South American mammal known as the Glypdodont, pictured right, will be the star attraction of a highly unusual single-owner collection of ornithological and palaeontological specimens being sold by the Moulins auctioneers Enchères Sadde on October 20.