Europe

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).

When it was introduced to the public in 1956 by the electronics company Braun, the compact stereo system Phonosuper was a spectacular design innovation.

The furniture in the background of many paintings by Walter Sickert has proved to be a useful aid when dating his works.

Chairs by leading early 20th century designers were in high demand at an online sale at Dorotheum (25% buyer’s premium) in Vienna this summer.

The name Ducret has been closely connected to the world of faience ever since the 1950s, when Siegfried Ducret published the first of numerous indispensable handbooks for collectors of and dealers in European porcelain and faience.