Europe

NETHERLANDS: Van Gogh’s oil landscape A Park in Spring, was the highlight of the inaugural exhibition to mark the opening of Sotheby’s new Netherlands headquarters on October 15.

EIRE: The long-awaited auction of one of Ireland’s foremost collections took place in Dublin on October 14 when Mealy’s, in association with Christie’s, dispersed the contents of 25 Fitzwilliam Street Upper, former residence of the late James Murnaghan, a Justice of the Supreme Court and chairman of the National Gallery of Ireland.

GERMANY: THE German Society of Auctioneers, Der Bundesverband Deutscher Kunstversteigerer is mounting a legal challenge to prevent Internet auction firms from advertising their sales in Germany as public auctions or sales.

GERMANY: COMPANIES advertising public auctions or sales on the Internet in Germany are breaking the law and should be stopped, say the German Society of Auctioneers and Fine Arts, Der Bundesverband Deutscher Kunstversteigerer.

GERMANY: ARTLINK have conducted what is being claimed as the first live online art auction. The sale – of International Young Baltic Art – took place on the evening of Saturday, August 7 at Rostock in Germany.

GERMANY: INTERNET art auctioneer Artnet.com which floated on the Frankfurt exchange in May, have denied a claim by magazine Boerse Online that their main shareholders are selling their shares.

AT LEAST a dozen of the world’s top dealers appear to have lost goods as a result of a series of elaborate and sophisticated swindles carried out by a gang operating out of Northern Italy during the past nine months.

AMSTERDAM: MAKERS of Jewish ritual metalwork tended to be a relatively conservative breed – slow to respond to wider artistic cross-currents – but illustrated above are a pair of English silver Torah finials or Rimmonim, 161/2in (42cm) high, which demonstrate there are exceptions to the rule.

EU: THE PROSPECT of droit de suite spreading throughout the European Union receded last week when the Internal Market Council found that resistance to the principle of artists’ resale rights had grown and the measure was shelved.

HOPE was rekindled last week that a last-minute change of heart in Europe could kill off the imposition of the artists resale levy, droit de suite, in the UK.

FRANCE: AFTER YEARS of apparent indifference, the French Government appears to be preparing for a last-minute stand against art import VAT.

GERMANY: IN another fortnight of rapid developments in e-commerce, Artnet.com, specialist fine art service provider on the Internet, went public on May 17 when it offered shares in its parent company, artnet.com AG, on Frankfurt’s Neuer Markt stock exchange.

FRANCE: THE FRENCH government’s apparent disregard for their art market, reflected by the repeated postponement of the auction reform (see above), was further illustrated by the dramatic last-minute cancellation of the sale of the contents of the former royal château at Randan in the Auvergne.

FRANCE: A NEW date of June 10 has been set for the first parliamentary reading of the long-delayed bill reforming French auction system.

SWITZERLAND: WORKING for posterity with a fast-approaching deadline? Unconcerned about leaving those vital documents unfinished? Then perhaps you need the inspiration of this automaton – a perfect memento mori for the millennial slacker.

EU: THE publication on the Internet of the report compiled for the European Commission on the effect of doubling VAT on works of art imported for sale from outside the EC has exposed huge flaws in the Commission’s argument for pressing ahead with the increased tax, say leading members of the trade.

ITALY: SOTHEBY’S have been informed that they can release to their purchasers the 23 lots on which the Italian authorities had requested a review of export licences immediately prior to the three-day sale of the Rossi Collection which ended on March 12.

France: WAS it or wasn’t it? – This richly decorated skullcap, above, which appeared at Neuilly on April 15, was at the very least an outstanding piece of episcopal headgear.

SWITZERLAND: TEFAF Basel, the sister fair to Maastricht, has broken all official ties with its founders TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation) who have handed over the organisation to Messe Basel, the exhibition hall which has hosted the fair since it was launched in 1995.

UK: JUST as rocket fuel was essential to the stratospheric aims of the V1 and V2 missiles towards the end of WW2, so the altigraph was mandatory to the success of Germany’s highest flying secret of WW1.