His 3ft 7in x 3ft 11in (1.1 x 1.2m) oil on canvas Le Partage du Pain (Sharing Bread) climbed to €94,000 (£66,000) at Beaux-Arts (22% buyer's premium) in Brussels on December 6.
The work was typical of Carte's penchant for weighty Art Deco stylisation, though its appeal lay more, perhaps, in its artful composition and sophisticated array of multi-shaded browns and greys than in its sombre figures or biblical mood.
A less characteristic and undated (but doubtless earlier) work by Carte, Fermes au Crépuscule (Farmhouses at Dusk), in oil on board measuring 2ft 2in x 2ft 1in (66 x 64cm), took €16,000 (£11,430) at the same sale, which was dominated by 19th and 20th century Belgian paintings. An unexpected €35,000 (£25,000)-against an estimate of just €6000-10,000-rewarded Georges Vanzevenberghen's 23in x 2ft 4in (58 x 70cm) brighly coloured, highly decorative 1915 work Les Modistes, picturing three pretty milliners seated around a white-clothed table.
The sale ranged back to François Musin's melodramatic mid-19th century Marine of stormy seas and a shipwreck, 3ft 10in x 5ft 11in (1.17 x 1.81m), at €32,000 (£22,860)-and forward to Maurice Wyckaert's 6ft 7in x 7ft 10in (2 x 2.4m) monster semi-abstraction from 1989, La Belle Eclaircie, at €22,000 (£15,700).
The sculpture highlight at €18,000 (£12,860) was a modern-looking patinated bronze group, Deux Danseuses by Philippe Wolfers (1858-1929), in a cire perdue casting by Montagutelli of Brussels, standing 17in (43cm) high on a 7 1/2in (19cm) marble plinth.
Since their move to Place du Grand-Sablon in 2003, Beaux-Arts have launched an auxiliary activity as fair organisers. Their first salon, called Grands Antiquaires, featured 26 international dealers last November (many who show at Maastricht and the Paris Biennale), and attracted 5000 visitors. The next will be devoted to 20th century Art & Design and staged during Maastricht from March 5-9. A third annual fair, devoted to Tribal & Asian Art, is planned for June as part of BRUNEAF.
Beaux-Arts' owners - auctioneer Philip Serck and the Flemish Old Master dealers Georges and François de Jonckheere - also plan a bookshop, café, lecture hall and Flemish art research-centre within the brick and concrete 1920s four-storey building they acquired in 2003. Thinking big? They have to. Their new venue - which they have christened (in English) The Art Home - needed a £1.5m facelift and is costing them the equivalent of over £25,000 a month to rent.
