International (print edition)

Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Maine will be holding a two-day weekend auction of more than 1000 lots on July 18-19.

Friedrich Goldscheider (1845-97) is famous for founding the Goldscheider ceramics factory which was set up in Vienna in 1885.

Outside Paris auctions have also started up as lockdown eases.

Sotheby’s Paris (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) reported a cumulative total of €5.4m for the five online sales it held over two weeks in mid May through to early June. The initiative attracted new buyers, said the auction house, with 35% in the jewellery sale and 27% in the Contemporary art auction.

Around 20 years ago the owner of a mediaeval manor house in northern Europe made an exciting discovery when clearing out the moats of the fortified house.

A newly discovered bronze by a French Renaissance sculptor was acquired by the Louvre museum for €1.15m (£1.05m) at an auction in Paris on June 9.

This painting of Madame de Saint-Maurice is one of five works by Edouard Vuillard spanning the years 1900-18 from the Georges and Jacqueline Herbin collection on offer at Artcurial in Paris.

This 1890s Japoniste-style photograph frame in brown patinated bronze applied with gilt branches of stylised myosotis is by the Paris firm of Maison Millet.

Auction rooms in France are gradually opening up again, albeit within the limitations of the new health and safety regulations set as a result of the coronavirus and aided by the extra input from absentee bidding on phones and online.

Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) has held its first live sales in Paris since lockdown.

A recent sale at Lempertz (25/20% buyer’s premium) was held in Berlin dedicated to works of art from Prussia. The outstanding favourite was a gold and enamel presentation box, a gift from the German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Under the changed regulations in Germany it would have been possible for Dr Andreas Sturies (20% buyer’s premium) in Düsseldorf to hold the spring auction in front of an audience.

A freeform table from the 1950s was the surprise winner at the design sale of Schops Turowski (23% buyer’s premium) in Krefeld on May 9.

In his day, Johann Heinrich von Dannecker was one of the most prominent German Neoclassical sculptors. He was born as the son of a stable-hand to the Duke of Württemberg, but went on to become the duke’s court sculptor.

A portrait of a 16th century Protestant theologian and reformer surfaced at a sale at Ginhart (23% buyer’s premium) in Tegernsee, some 35 miles south of the Bavarian capital Munich.

The Parisian clockmaker Henri Lioret (1848-1938) entered the market for ‘talking machines’ in an unconventional fashion – his first patented device of 1893 was a talking doll.

While the Japanese woodblock print artist Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764) is credited with the first use of one-point perspective in the depiction of interior spaces, a technique previously known only in Western art, his colleague Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814) achieved even greater fame when he mastered the creation of perspective prints of outdoor scenes, known as Uki-e.

Painting went through lengthy ownership saga before being returned to family and then sold.

A veritable pantheon of Greek gods adorns this partly gilt silver tankard which is coming up for sale in an auction at Im Kinsky in Vienna on June 23-25.

One of the central attractions in Rome is the Piazza Navona and the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers). It was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1650 at the behest of Pope Innocent X.