Impressionist and Modern Art

CAPE Cod auctioneers Eldred’s of East Dennis had a busy August schedule and results from their series of Asian and Americana sales will appear in future US Selections, but seen here are two of the 970 lots found in an August 12-13 sale of Fine & Decorative Art.

COLLECTING fashions come and go, but the redoubtable Marcel Dyf (1899-1995) never seems to be short of admirers. This signed 23 1/4in x 2ft 4in (59 x 71cm) canvas, right, La Courbe de la Rivière, was the lone picture highlight of Dreweatt Neate’s (15% buyer’s premium) August 24 sale in Bristol when it sold to the London trade at £7600 against an estimate of £4000-6000.

EIGHT market-fresh female bronzes by Aristide Maillol, ranging in height from 8-12in (20-30cm) and designed between 1896 and 1905, surfaced in the Binoche (20% buyer’s premium) saleroom on July 2.

A 56-sheet sketch book by Camille Pissarro, 8 x 11in (21 x 28cm), dating from his stay in Venezuela between April and August 1854, sold for €150,000 (£100,000) at Piasa (20.33/13.16% buyer's premium) on June 18.

HAVING spent millions of pounds revamping their Bond Street flagship saleroom, could Bonhams (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) succeed in attracting the sort of prestigious consignments of Modern and Contemporary art which are going to be the life-blood of any successful international auction house in the early 21st century?

TWENTIETH century and Contemporary art underlined their status as the key growth areas for the major auction houses when London’s June round of Part I Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales netted £120.4m. Six months ago the equivalent sales took £94m, while back in June 2003 – when war was raging in Iraq – they could only muster a relatively modest £81m.

TWO of the more successful lots from a May 14 sale of American and European pictures held in Boston by Skinners are seen here.

RECENTLY renamed and relocated, Bloomsbury Auctions have launched an Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art department.

AUCTION history was duly made at Sotheby’s New York on the evening of Wednesday, May 5 when Picasso’s iconic 1905 Rose Period canvas, Garçon à la Pipe, was knocked down for a hammer price of $93m (£54.7m), making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

BUCKINGHAM-based Dickins Auctioneers have pulled a major rabbit out of the hat for their inaugural Spring picture sale on April 17 by including a previously unseen collection of 24 Erté (1892-1990) gouache theatrical costume designs which will include this one, right, for Showgirls.

Contemporary art shines in London: The February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in London gave plenty of evidence that the top end of the art market has made a strong recovery from last year’s bout of Iraq War syndrome.

Using the incentive of financial guarantees, Sotheby’s have secured two spectacular consignments for the New York spring auction calendar: the Forbes collection of Fabergé and pictures from the Whitney collection.

A French Foundation devoted to Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) has finally been launched, ten years after his widow Annette called for its creation in her will. The French government gave the Fondation Alberto & Annette Giacometti the green light on December 9.

FRANCE’S new auction watchdog has flexed its muscles for the first time, banning two paintings – one attributed to Van Gogh, the other to Toulouse-Lautrec – from sale on suspicion of being fakes.

Most celebrated for his murals in the café at Tate Britain, Rex Whistler (1905-1944) was also a fine draughtsman and illustrator as is shown in this pen, ink and watercolour drawing, Netherhampton House in the County of Wiltshire, right

Highest bid among the 158 lots of Impressionist & Expressionist works on paper in the Tremmel collection auctioned by Ketterer Kunst on May 5-6 was the €130,000 (£89,700), just over top-estimate, paid in the room by a Rhineland dealer against six telephone bidders for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Fränzi am Wasser Liegend (Fränzi Reclining at the Waterside, c.1910) in gouache, watercolour and chalk, 13 x 17in (33 x 43.5cm).

THERE was a collective sigh of relief in the New York salerooms last week when, after a long period of uncertainty following the war in Iraq and turmoil in the stockmarkets, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s held impressive Part I Impressionist and Modern sales. Any fears that anti-French feeling would spill over in the salerooms proved unfounded after French artists took the top honours at both houses.

MAGRITTE'S Oiseau du Ciel, pictured right, commissioned by Belgium’s Sabena airline in 1965, was sold at auction in Brussels on May 5 for a triple-estimate €3.4m (£2.3m).

FAMOUS since the 16th century for its boys’ school, the small Rutland market town of Uppingham can also brag about being the home of the Goldmark Gallery. With a secondhand book department, this very amiable and innovative gallery always has much to delight, particularly in the field of 20th century prints.

ST JAMES’S sculpture dealer Robert Bowman will be on duty at Maastricht again this year, and at the top fair he will be showing the top names of 19th and 20th century bronzes, such as Rodin and Degas.