Sweden

Scandinavian auction house Bukowskis have a new owner.

A spectacular sleeper was awoken in Sweden on December 5 when an oil sketch catalogued as in the manner of Peter Paul Rubens sold to a British buyer at SEK16.6m (£1,298,000) amidst speculation it was by the artist himself.

STAYING with the international mood of the Diary this week, Sweden’s top antiques event, the 28th annual Stockholm International Antiques Fair runs at the Stockholm Messan from January 27 to 30 with a preview on the evening of January 26.

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.

A £70,000 REWARD is being offered after five paintings worth more than £1.7m were stolen from an antiques fair in Sweden.

SWEDEN: AN unrestored canvas by the American painter Julius Leblanc Stewart (1855-1919) of two fashionably dressed ladies meeting on the deck of a yacht on the Côte d’Azur inspired predictably intense levels of demand when it came under the hammer at the Stockholm rooms of Stockholms Auctionsverk (17.5 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 22.

SWEDEN at the end of the 19th century was the birthplace of notable inventors of mechanical music who later made their fortunes in America.