France

FRANCE: FOLLOWING the recent agreement on a definitive text by a bicameral parliamentary commission, France’s auction reform was adopted by the Assemblée Nationale on May 23 and is slated for its final reading in the Senate on June 27.

FRANCE: A Paris court has told one of the world’s leading Websites to prevent French Web-users from gaining access to auctions featuring Nazi memorabilia.

FRANCE: THE reform of France’s auction system now looks in sight following an agreement reached by a bicameral commission drawn from members of both the country’s parliamentary chambers.

FRANCE: SEVENTEEN terracotta statuettes from Nigeria (Nok) and Niger (Bura), expected to bring prices between £250 and £5000, were withdrawn from sale at the Hôtel Drouot on April 21 after last-minute objections from Nigeria and Niger.

US & FRANCE: TWO works by Philippe de Champaigne have been withdrawn from the sale of the Karl Lagerfeld collection, in New York on May 23, and offered to the French State.

FRANCE: ARTEMIS, the holding company belonging to Christie’s owner François Pinault, have acquired the Paris auction group Piasa.

FRANCE: THE French auction law reform bill had its second reading in the Senate on February 23 and, according to National President Gérard Champin, “90 per cent of the text has now been approved”.

FRANCE: PHILLIPS' new owners, luxury goods group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, are to acquire Tajan, the leading French auction house.

FRANCE: THANKS in part to the Chateau de Groussay sale staged jointly with Sotheby's, Poulain-Le Fur moved ahead of Piasa in 1999 to rank second in Paris with sales of Fr285m (£27.5m).

FRANCE: FRENCH online auction information company Artprice.com became the first dot.com business to hit the Nouveau Marché Paris on Friday January 21. Its stock was placed at Fr125 (£11.67) per share and the 1.15m shares on offer represent 18.4 per cent of the company capital.

FRANCE'S auction reform bill was given its first reading in the Assemblée Nationale (Lower House) on December 21/22.

EU: BRITAIN’S opponents on the droit de suite issue were in retreat last week with the emergence of telling evidence from France and Germany (the two main champions of artists’ resale rights) that the levy is both damaging to art markets and of little benefit to living artists.

FRANCE: CHRISTIE’S France will start the new Millennium by relocating from Rue Paul-Baudry to new premises on Avenue Matignon, just off the Champs-Elysées and some 500 yards from Sotheby’s base on Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré.

FRANCE: CHRISTIE’S will move into their new Paris headquarters at 9 Avenue Matignon at the centre of the art and antiques district of the 8th arrondissement on January 3.

FRANCE: THIS anonymous oil-on-paper portrait by Annibale or Agostino Carracci sold 'for around £60,000' at Virginie Pitchal’s Mirror of the Soul exhibition at her Left Bank gallery.

FRANCE: PIERRE Lellouche, député (MP) for the Drouot district of Paris, has called for the suppression of import VAT on art and a large cut in the rate of droit de suite, the artists’ resale levy.

EU: THE PROSPECT of droit de suite spreading throughout the European Union receded last week when the Internal Market Council found that resistance to the principle of artists’ resale rights had grown and the measure was shelved.

FRANCE: AFTER YEARS of apparent indifference, the French Government appears to be preparing for a last-minute stand against art import VAT.

HOPE was rekindled last week that a last-minute change of heart in Europe could kill off the imposition of the artists resale levy, droit de suite, in the UK.

FRANCE: THE FRENCH government’s apparent disregard for their art market, reflected by the repeated postponement of the auction reform (see above), was further illustrated by the dramatic last-minute cancellation of the sale of the contents of the former royal château at Randan in the Auvergne.