Austria

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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

Since 1984, only about 20 paintings by the Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910) have come on the auction market and many of his best-known works are in international museums.

Centenary of the hugely influential school’s foundation prompts a string of auctions.

In its active years, some 1200 students passed through the Bauhaus school. It marked the starting point of many an illustrious career as numerous members of the teaching staff went on to become the most important artists of their era.

Far and away the highest result for an Asian work of art in recent sales in Germany, Austria and Switzerland was the spectacular price of SFr4.2m (£3.3m) achieved by Koller in Zurich for a Chinese bronze censer (see front page, ATG No 2397).

Two highly different examples of sculptural art caused the greatest stir at the sale of works of art at Kinsky (25% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on April 8-10. First up was the 3ft 5in (1.05m) high lime-wood sculpture of the Madonna with Child, flanked by two angels.

In the 1980s, the 3ft 7in x 2ft 9in (1.1m x 85cm) canvas of Saint Bartholomew being offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 30 was tentatively ascribed to Caravaggio. The treatment of light and shadow and the extreme naturalism in the portrayal certainly indicate a proximity to the revolutionary artist.

Almost 140 carpets and weaves which illustrate the differing designs of the individual tribes that make up the people of Turkmenistan are to be offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 9.

Among the prominent sitters for the Austrian artist Wilhelm Viktor Krausz (1878-1959) was Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

Chinese bidders were the driving force at this autumn’s German and Austrian auctions of Asian art.