Europe

THE Swiss authorities have launched a criminal investigation into scam guide firms and their associated debt recovery agencies.

BY IVAN MACQUISTEN Droit de Suite, the much-feared extra levy on art sales, cannot now be introduced in the UK on January 1 next year.

BY IVAN MACQUISTENROBERT Brooks has been nailing his colours to the mast in more ways than one in the past week.

A French court has upheld the right of Paris auction firm Artcurial to use the name F. Tajan in their full title Artcurial Briest-Le Fur-Poulain-F. Tajan.

France’s Auctioneers’ Association SYMEV is to stage the first-ever Journées Nationales des Ventes aux Enchères (National Auction Weekend) on November 19-20.

INITIAL Government responses to recommendations made during the consultation on droit de suite are encouraging for the art market.

A DECADE after the Thurn und Taxis and Baden Baden sales in the 1990s, Sotheby’s are once again decamping to a German castle to stage another mammoth aristocratic auction.

Strengthening their position as Ireland’s largest auction house, James Adam & Sons have been assigned the fine art business of major Dublin rival and property giant Hamilton Osborne King.

NO issue has caused more reader complaints to ATG in the past decade than scam guides targeting the trade. Now there is a chance to put a stop to them by signing up to a Europe-wide campaign.

BRUSSELS FAIR PREVIEW Over 100 dealers – half from abroad – will gather in Brussels from June 8-12.

by Ian McKayUNDOUBTEDLY one of the more famous of cartographic curiosities, the ‘Leo Belgicus’ map, in which the 17 provinces of the Low Countries are depicted in the form of a lion, was first introduced by Michael Eitzinger as part of a topographical and historical account of the Netherlands, published in Cologne in 1583.

François Pinault, the French business tycoon who owns Christie’s, has abandoned his plans to build a £100m museum near Paris to house his Contemporary art collection.

François Tajan, who quit as chairman of Tajan SA, the firm founded by his father Jacques, at the end of March, has joined Paris rivals ArtCurial.

A SNATCHED moment frozen in time thanks to the lucky presence of a camera... or was it?

The French art and antiques trade is growing increasingly concerned about heavy-handed police tactics following the recent €15m embezzlement scandal surrounding an employee at a leading French bank.

The Paris Biennale is set to move from the Carrousel du Louvre back to the Grand Palais, its historic venue, for its next outing in 2006 after Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanöe unexpectedly vetoed plans for an underground car-park beneath the Palais that would have delayed its reopening until 2008 or 2009.

A GATHERING of Europe’s leading art market professionals is calling on the European Commission to delay extending the worst effects of Droit de Suite after 2012 in the UK.

CERAMICS SALES IN FRANCE £1 = €1.44A collection of drink-related objects and another devoted to Italian Renaissance maiolica were two very different single-owner properties on offer on the same day at the Paris auction house ArtCurial (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last month.

THE added tax burden of Droit de Suite, which comes in at the beginning of next year, could be far worse than feared.

A SMALL Renoir portrait painted in 1913, with an estimated value of €170,000-200,000 (£120,000-140,000), was stolen from the Tajan premises in Paris shortly before it was to be offered at a sale on March 31.