Austria

A new record for a camera sold at auction was set by WestLicht in Vienna when one of only a handful of surviving Leica 0-series cameras – this one carrying the serial number 122 – sold at €2m (£1.76m) plus 20% buyer’s premium, to a private buyer from Asia.

Gerald Weinpolter is based in Vienna and specialises in Austrian painting.

Paintings by major exponents of Expressionism almost invariably occupy many of the top slots in the modern and contemporary art sales staged in late autumn across Germany and Austria.

The potential star of the show at the sale of Selected Works held by Grisebach (25% buyer’s premium) in Berlin on November 30 lived up to its expectations.

A philosopher of mathematics, the human consciousness and language, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was described by his teacher Bertrand Russell as “the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived”.

A mix of surprising and more predictable results emerged in the first round of Old Master auctions in Germany and Austria this autumn.

Jewels by Buccellati, all from European aristocratic collections, feature in the jewellery auction at Dorotheum in Vienna on October 19.

The second, and final, instalment of the collection of the Viennese art dealer Reinhold Hofstatter will come up for sale at Dorotheum’s Vienna rooms on September 26.

Austrian artists figured prominently at the June 20-21 sale at Kinsky (26% buyer’s premium) in Vienna.

Dealers in and collectors of Asian art were spoilt for choice around the middle of June in Europe. As well as the Asian sale series in Paris (see last week’s ATG, No 2300), a vast selection of works came up for sale in Zurich, Cologne, Brussels, Salzburg and Stuttgart.

Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica is one of those rare epoch-making works, a publication that changes everything in its field and sets a standard for others to emulate.

Recent Old Master paintings in Vienna and Cologne have yielded some predicted but also unexpected results including a high price for a work by a German better known for his poems and plays than his paintings.

Austrian saleroom im Kinsky has hit out at the “biased reporting” and “aggressive reaction” to its decision to offer a Nazi-looted painting at auction. With heightened media coverage about the consignment, the portrait of a Dutch merchant by Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613-1670) was eventually withdrawn shortly before it was due to be offered in Vienna at the end of last month.

A small 6¼ x 11in (16 x 27 cm) oil on canvas by Nicolas De Staël (1914-55), titled Composition and dating from 1950, is one of the potential highlights of the contemporary art auction to be held by Dorotheum in Vienna on May 31 and June 1.

A French Old Master drawing, a 20th century work by a specialist animal painter and an American Abstract Expressionist work were among the pictures that have performed strongly in auctions across the German regions and in Austria recently.

Daniel Quare (1648-1724) is primarily known as a clock and watchmaker. He was, however, also an accomplished maker of portable barometers, one of which came up for sale at Dorotheum (25/22/15% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on March 29.