Europe

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.

US & FRANCE: TWO works by Philippe de Champaigne have been withdrawn from the sale of the Karl Lagerfeld collection, in New York on May 23, and offered to the French State.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: 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terracotta statuettes from Nigeria (Nok) and Niger (Bura), expected to bring prices between £250 and £5000, were withdrawn from sale at the Hôtel Drouot on April 21 after last-minute objections from Nigeria and Niger.

GERMANY: New technology looks set to cause a leap forward in German retail practice.

AUSTRIA: THE ENTRY of Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government could have repercussions for the country's art market, warns Otto Hans Ressler, director of Austria's second-largest auction firm Wiener Kunst.

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.

EIRE: ONE of a number of remarkable prices achieved at James Adam & Bonhams' Irish Art sale on December 8 was the record IR£50,000 (£41,665) given for Harry Kernoff's 1936 oil of a Dublin cab.

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

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.

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 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.

EU: THE FATE of the UK’s flourishing Contemporary and Modern art trade hung in the balance last week after the Government had continued its steadfast opposition to the introduction of droit de suite by frustrating an attempt to push through the directive at the Internal Market Council meeting.

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.

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

NETHERLANDS: Van Gogh’s oil landscape A Park in Spring, was the highlight of the inaugural exhibition to mark the opening of Sotheby’s new Netherlands headquarters on October 15.