France

CONTENTS sales dominated the early May auction action in Belgium, and there were two more held in France later in the month. These were very different affairs – one offering an array of recently acquired furniture and objets d’art, the other being more in the “family heirloom” category.

SPECIALISING in what the name implies, British Import Antiques, who deal out of a wooden Belle Epoque pavilion at 23, Boulevard du Parc on Ile de Jatte in Neuilly, just west of Paris, are holding two open-door weekends on June 4 to 6 and June 11-13 when they hope to dispose of more than 1000 items of stock.

FRANCE'S national auction watchdog, the Conseil des Ventes, has banned the firm Rey & Associés from all auction activity, for repeatedly staging sales without adequate insurance cover.

A SET of four late-18th century Japanese gold lacquered panels caused a flurry of international interest when they came up for sale at Rossini (19.94% buyer’s premium) back on April 2.

ALTHOUGH they were one of three auctioneers forced to withdraw pre-Columbian works of art from sale last year over questions of provenance, Christie’s will continue to offer early South American items for auction in Paris.

THE Paris expert Alain Weill makes a habit of holding sales which are rather more interesting than those of many of his colleagues. For sure they have a strong Gallic slant, but then sales in London are strongly biased towards the British series.

BUSINESS was patchy at the 8th Pavillon des Antiquaires et des Beaux Arts that ran from March 27-April 4 in the Jardin des Tuileries, featuring 80 galleries, all but seven from France. New York’s Barry Friedman, participating for the first time, headed the small foreign contingent along with Michel Soskine Inc., showing drawings by the German-born Horst Janssen (1927-95).

THE new money-laundering laws appear inadvertently to have created a problem for the coin trade.

JEAN-BAPTISTE de Proyart, vice president of Sotheby’s France, is to leave the company this summer to work as an independent art advisor in books and manuscripts, based in Paris. He joined Sotheby’s in 1993 and, as head of books and manuscripts in France, organised several sales since the firm were allowed to sell in Paris in 2001.

PARIS auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche has been given an eight-month suspended jail sentence, and fined €100,000, after a Paris court found him guilty of fraud.

The 20in (52cm) high dinanderie vase by Jean Dunand, pictured, right, with original black patina and sleek Art Deco outlines belying its early date of 1913, zoomed to €60,000 (£40,000), five times the estimate, at the Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale of 20th century decorative arts on March 4.

THE 330-lot tribal art sale at Blanchet & Associés (17.94% buyer’s premium) back on January 30 featured 173 pre-Columbian pieces. These achieved a 70 per cent take-up, with a top price of €14,500 (£10,000) for a polished stone ritual Hacha from Guatemala, right, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2in (24 x 19.5cm), whose relief decoration took the form of the profiled face of a dead man, topped by the giant, curved fang of the sacred serpent.

BOUND in red morocco gilt, an autograph draft manuscript of one of the more important letters that make up the narrative of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloise – Lettre XXI, in which Saint-Preux writes about the women of Paris – was sold for €82,000 (£56,550) as part of the library of King Léopold III and Princess Lilian of Belgium at the Chateau d’Argenteuil near Waterloo. The sale was held by Sotheby’s Paris on December 11.

A compromise deal has been agreed between rival Paris fair organisers the Syndicat National des Antiquaires – the national dealers’ association, which stages the Biennale and the Salon du Collectioneur at the Carrousel du Louvre – and SOC (Société d’Organisation Culturelle), the commercial company (owned by Paris dealers Patrick Perrin and Stéphane Custot) which stages the twice-yearly Pavillon des Antiquaires et des Beaux Arts in the adjacent Tuileries Gardens.

Furniture designed by Charlotte Perriand (1903–99) and produced by Steph Simon éditeur, raised some stiff start-of-year prices in the Piasa (17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) saleroom on January 28.

PARIS: A PLETHORA of picture sales in Paris in December yielded some unexpectedly high prices but an erratic overall response, with an average take-up (by lot) of around 60 per cent. Results were stronger for Old Masters than for Modern Art, while the presence of buyers from across Europe helped offset the absence of Americans, deterred by the weak dollar.

Paris auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche has been charged with fraud in connection with the sale of three pictures in 1995. Binoche, 61, is accused of buying two works himself at an auction he staged on 18 October 1995, which is illegal under French law, and of selling another work after the sale (a Prud’hon drawing, to the Beaux-Arts museum in Dijon). After-sales were illegal in France at the time, although they have been permitted since 2001.

Christie’s have become France’s leading auction house in terms of market share after posting 2003 Paris sales of €80.3m (£55m), a rise of 40 per cent on 2002.

Fashion giants LVMH have sold their controlling stake in leading French auction house Tajan to Rodart, a company owned by American businesswoman Rodica B. Seward. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.

A French Foundation devoted to Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) has finally been launched, ten years after his widow Annette called for its creation in her will. The French government gave the Fondation Alberto & Annette Giacometti the green light on December 9.