Europe

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

THE spectre of a nationalised Drouot haunted delegates at the Annual Congress of French auctioneers’ union SYMEV, held at Artcurial’s Champs-Elysées premises earlier this month.

THE Hotel Drouot, the communal auction facility used by most Paris auctioneers, faces an even bigger overhaul than expected after the French Justice Minister’s scathing report about its culture and working practices.

A COLLECTION of 85 bosuns’ calls was among items stolen from a home in Milan in early August. Most of the calls were British, but there were also examples from the USA, Italy, China and India.

THE October 8 toy sale at Nagel in Stuttgart will include this Märklin gauge-1 model of the Stuttgart train station.

IT may have been an exceptional piece that generated an equally exceptional level of presale interest but, even still, few people present at Christie's Paris for the sale of Amedeo Modigliai's (1884-1920) Tête were expecting it to become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in France.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

ATG’s parent company, ATG Media, has agreed to provide the technology for the first live internet bidding site in Germany.

THE Greek courts have agreed not to pursue dealer Malcolm Hay any further pending his appeal against his conviction for trading in stolen antiquities.

GIORGIO Corbelli, president of Italian auction house Finarte, has been given a 20-month jail sentence on charges related to financial dishonesty.

LAPADA chief executive Sarah Percy-Davies has made significant inroads into the Russian domestic market on behalf of British dealers as part of an official British trade delegation.

SPEAKING to ATG at the end of last week, London Old Master dealer Johnny Van Haeften still had not actually seen the monumental painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) for which he paid 6.1m euros (£5.65m) at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna on April 21.

A LONG-lost array of paintings, prints, books and drawings owned by legendary art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) will be one of the talking points of the Paris summer season when it goes on sale at Sotheby’s on June 29.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.

IF the mood at the opening of the TEFAF Maastricht fair on March 11 was tempered with a note of caution, this was dramatically heightened after a power cut plunged the halls into complete darkness just as the vernissage was getting underway.

Five months after ATG revealed the reattribution of La Bella Principessa to Leonardo da Vinci, the man who spotted it is ready to unveil another major find.

SOTHEBY’S staged the most lucrative art sale ever in the Netherlands on March 8 when they offered a 161-lot selection of contemporary art from the corporate collection of British American Tobacco.

A DEALER who says his career has been ruined by trumped-up charges in the Greek courts has been arrested again – even though he is currently appealing against the conviction and three-year jail sentence.