Austria

Just before the turn of the century, the Austrian artist Koloman Moser began working as a teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna. He was equally proficient in painting as he was in designing jewellery, silverware or ceramics.

Items designed by Josef Hoffmann, leading light of the Wiener Werkstӓtte movement, will feature in a sale in Vienna.

A painting from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens making its second appearance at Dorotheum (28/25/22/18% buyer’s premium) in the space of a decade was the best-seller in the November 10 Old Masters auction in Vienna.

Throughout his long career, Giorgio de Chirico often returned to the subject ‘Piazza d’Italia’, one of the most familiar images among his metaphysical paintings.

A tragic shipwreck provided the Danish marine painter Anton Melbye and his colleague John William Bottomley, a German of Irish origin, with a dramatic subject for their 2ft x 2ft 11in (60 x 90cm) oil painting The Wreck of the Anglo Saxon from 1863.

Dorotheum’s auction of wrist and pocket watches in Vienna on November 27 includes this Rolex Dato Compax ref 4768.

A bowler hat that once belonged to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria will go under the hammer at Dorotheum on October 19 in the sale of imperial court memorabilia and historical objects in Vienna.

Always likely to produce one of the sale’s best results, a 1798 first of Thomas Malthus’ 'Essay on the Principle of Population' duly led the bidding in a recent German sale.

A bidding battle broke out at Kinsky (28% buyer’s premium) in Vienna for this pair of figures fashioned as King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I, each about 13in (32cm) high.

The medium of jewellery provided perhaps the greatest canvas for the new international style that flowed through the decorative arts around the turn of the 20th century.

Jewellery provided one of the great expressions of the Art Nouveau style. Here ATG reports on four exceptional items made in four different countries in the early years of the 20th century

Vienna saleroom Dorotheum (28/25/22/18% buyer’s premium) was hoping to send a positive signal for the art market from its latest Old Master sale.

A recent sale at Dorotheum (28/25/22% buyer’s premium) in Vienna was topped by this spectacular diamond and aquamarine tiara-necklace by Cartier London.

Dual time zones watches first came into fashion in France, where they were used to show both ‘time’ in the traditional manner and also Revolutionary time, a short-lived idea based on the decimal system.

A veritable pantheon of Greek gods adorns this partly gilt silver tankard which is coming up for sale in an auction at Im Kinsky in Vienna on June 23-25.

German auction houses traditionally hold their autumn sales of Asian art towards the end of the season and this year collectors and dealers were spoilt for choice.

In 1906, three years after he had founded the Wiener Werkstätte with Koloman Moser, the multi-talented Austrian Josef Hoffmann designed a silver casket.

Dorotheum (28/25/22/18% buyer’s premium) in Vienna could boast two seven-figure prices in as many days, including the highest Austrian auction price of this year so far.

“There is no such thing as modern art, there is only art and it is perpetual.” The author of these lines was, perhaps surprisingly, the highly modern Austrian painter Egon Schiele and are part of an artistic manifesto written on July 17, 1911.

Jewellery owned by Marie Valerie Hapsburg, the favourite daughter of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, will be auctioned by Dorotheum in Vienna on November 27.