Europe

A FRENCH company has launched a new online stolen art database which allows victims of theft to offer rewards directly.

EBAY have vowed to fight a new French court ruling that effectively makes them responsible for what is sold on their site. In effect, the ruling could mean them having to vet items before they are offered, rather than removing offending objects once they have been alerted to them.

A COLLECTION of furniture and objects from a grand Parisian townhouse will go under the hammer in France at the end of the month – courtesy of the Ivory Coast Government.

TWO very different scenes of cricket matches in progress sold recently at very different locations. The artists themselves could also hardly be more contrasting: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and L.S. Lowry (1887-1976).

A FRENCH court has ruled for the first time that eBay are directly responsible for what is sold on their website.

THE battle over Antiquorum, the world’s leading clock and watch auction house, has stepped up a gear, with significant moves from both sides.

Two auctioneers, two Gérôme sculptures, but two very different estimates

The Louvre have secured the return of a French Crown Jewel after 121 years, through a private sale with Christie’s New York.

Nearly two years after its rushed introduction in the Republic of Ireland, the Artist’s Resale Right is still causing confusion among auctioneers, dealers, artists and aministrators.

A world record price for a comic-strip illustration was paid at a specalist sale at Artcurial in Paris on March 29: Georges Remi Hergé’s 1932 ink-and-gouache design for the cover of Tintin en Amérique.

THE French government’s change of heart over the Artist’s Resale Right is being hailed a sea change by fellow ‘anti’ campaigners.

A pair of Dutch library globes by the man regarded as father of western globe making, Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), now rank the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Holland.

FRENCH culture minister Christine Albanel has announced a major overhaul of France’s auction system to meet President Sarkozy’s urgent call to “turn the French art market around”.

Organisers Artexis have cut Belgium's Eurantica fair from ten days to five next month.

Everyone knows about the legendary TEFAF waiting list. The pre-eminence of Maastricht among international art fairs means spaces at the town’s congress and exhibition centre in March are as rare as hens’ teeth.

WITH their much-publicised US$30m Van Gogh, London and New York art dealers Dickinson had one of the most talked-about works at TEFAF Maastricht which closed on Sunday, March 16.

The 17.9m euro premium-inclusive total generated by Christie’s two-day sale of the ‘hidden’ collection of Charles Gillot in Paris last week may have wildly surpassed the auctioneers’ 5m euro predictions, but the performance of the 476-lot auction nonetheless ran pretty much along predicted lines.

Bonhams staged their first auction in France on February 9 with a sale of vintage automobiles at the Retromobile car fair in Paris.

Widespread concern over warrants that can ignore human rights

SOTHEBY’S and Christie’s have launched an unprecedented attack on France’s auction laws in a bid to halt Paris’s decades-long decline as a market force.