Europe

Deauville Auction’s saleroom success has incited other firms to try out the Normandy resort as a sales venue, something Augier is happy with insofar as they “bring in extra activity, which is good for the town” – and providing, he adds pointedly, that “they are quality sales”.

Exhibitors at the 2003 Monaco Biennale are invariably reluctant to go into detail about sales and, of course, a lot of business is done in the weeks and months after the fair as a result of contacts made. But it was clear that not all participants at this year’s Biennale (August 1-17) had enjoyed the same level of activity.

Laure de Beauvau-Craon has announced that she will step down as chief executive of Sotheby’s France at the end of the year. She has held the post since 1991 and will be remembered for successfully lobbying the European Commission to bring about the abolition of the domestic auction monopoly of France’s commissaires-priseurs.

WELL-known Dutch Oriental specialists Vanderven & Vanderven are stalwarts of Maastricht, Basel Cultura and the Grosvenor House fairs, but their taste for international events has been sharpened of late.

Prices at auction for works by Basil Blackshaw have been slowly creeping up over the past few years and Northern Ireland’s most famous living artist now enjoys international acclaim.

MADRID organisers IFEMA stage what is arguably Spain’s top fair, Feriarte, at the Juan Carlos I Exhibition Centre in the Spanish capital from November 22 to 30.

IRELAND: IRISH pictures for many years flew off the rostrum with both a strong private market in Ireland and the money of Irish-Americans to fuel the enthusiasm. Irish art still, of course, sells, but there is no doubt that collectors are becoming more selective.

THE word from Ireland is that autumn could be hard work – judging by results at the antiques fair staged as part of the Royal Dublin Society Horse Show from August 6 to 10. The Horse Show is a prime event in the city’s social calendar and the idea of the antiques fair – organised in the past by veteran Irish promoter Louis O’ Sullivan but this year by the RDS itself – is to put the 25 exhibitors in a potentially profitable ambience.

FRANCE: ON July 4 Chayette-Cheval (17.94% buyer’s premium) devoted an entire sale to clocks, watches and related items, achieving a hammer total of €571,000 (£394,000).

FRANCE: The 162-lot Piasa (17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) furniture sale on June 25 was 70 per cent sold by lot and brought €1.8m (£1.24m) hammer, with a three-drawered Louis XVI citronwood-veneered bureau plat, with painted metal decoration of arabesques and blue and white medallions, evocative of the work of Pierre Macret (active 1756-85), selling for €340,000 (£234,000) – helped by its leather top with crowned N and imperial corner eagles.

The Collection of Louis Vivien, a Paris bookseller who opened his shop in Rue des Ecoles in 1905, swiftly specialising in the aeronautical world after attending the inaugural Salon Aéronautique of 1908, provided Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) with yet another new sale theme – Aviation – on June 21.

£36,000 private bid on cabinet shows underlying market strength: BRITISH auctioneers have long looked enviously across the Irish Sea where there still seems a wealth of high-quality furniture coming onto the market from private sources to be welcomed not merely by the trade but also by confident and well-heeled private bidders who have been the dominant force these past ten years and more.

A successful sale isn’t always an instant transaction and one of the more notable features of exhibiting at a fair is follow-on business. This can often take some time to materialise but is nonetheless satisfying, especially when it produces a particularly pleasing conclusion, as was the case with this pair of 18th century Sèvres vases à compartiments, pictured right, which London dealer Robert Compton-Jones of the Woollahra Trading Co. took to the Paris Biennale last September.

ITALY: MORE than 440 lots of silver and Russian works of art were offered at Christie’s (24-18.5% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) sale in Rome on June 12, of which slightly less than half sold.

THERE will be plenty of antiques activity in central Paris this autumn, centred on two major fairs each with their quota of high- profile international dealers. A feast for fairgoers, but also behind the scenes a feast for those with a taste for intrigue since, as is so often the case with the Paris trade, there is plenty of politics involved. My Paris-based colleague Simon Hewitt takes a peek behind the arras and reports:

SPAIN: The spring and early summer auctions in Madrid were notable for one outstanding sale held at Alcalá Subastas, which generated not only a very large total but also some controversy. Alcalá Subastas (15% buyer’s premium) counts on the considerable expertise of Richard de Willermin as their paintings expert.

Subastas Segre (16% buyer’s premium) held their monthly sale from May 20 to 22. In the picture catalogue, top price was the double-estimate €30,000 (£22,060) for a complete set of Goya’s Caprichos, catalogued as First Edition but not in ideal condition. A 3ft 3in (1m) square abstract oil on canvas of 1982 by Fernando Zobel (1942-1984), whose work is highly regarded in Spain, made €23,700 (£17,425).

Following the Camard auction, the most important 20th Century Decorative Arts sale of the Paris summer season, was that staged by ArtCurial (20.33/17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) at the Hôtel Dassault on July 2.

ON June 17, Finarte-Semenzato held a further sale of furniture and Old Master paintings in Milan, offering almost 540 lots of which less than half sold.

One of the big classical numismatics events of the year is the spring sale at Leu (15% buyer’s premium) in Zurich. This year’s, on May 5-6, was a bumper crop – with 1156 lots it is the largest sale that Leu have held since their foundation in 1956.