Switzerland

Second slice from Ducret collection plus other sources achieve high prices in Zurich

The highlight of the Koller spring series came from the Old Masters sale.

A spectacular parure of sapphires and diamonds, from the collection of Napoleon’s adoptive daughter, Stephanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden (1789-1860), is for sale at Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction in Geneva on May 12.

In June 1925, only six months before his death, the Swiss painter Felix Vallotton and his wife visited the Périgord for the first time, which he declared to be “the most beautiful countryside on earth”.

It is well known that the death of an artist often leads to an upsurge of market interest and that has certainly happened with the Bulgarian Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, who died last year.

Works by Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) were the highlights of the Koller (25/22/15% buyer’s premium) sale of Swiss Art, held in Zurich as part of its December auction series.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

A table screen was often to be found in the study of a Chinese scholar.

One section of the Asian art sale at Koller in Zurich on December 3, with its own catalogue, is devoted to a private collection of Chinese ink drawings.

Koller is holding a sale of Post-War and Contemporary art on December 5 in Zurich.

A 176-lot group of Meissen and other European porcelain from the collection of Dr Siegfried Ducret, consigned from the estate of Rosmarie Schmidt-Ducret, will be offered at auction by Koller in Zurich on September 24.

In a letter to his brother, written in 1883, Vincent van Gogh expressed his admiration for the Swiss painter Albert Anker.

The sale of the Müller-Frei collection of paintings and decorative arts held by Koller (25% buyer’s premium) in Zurich last month included two early 18th century Meissen figure groups that outstripped their estimates.

Among the sales series held by Koller (25/22/15% buyer’s premium) in Zurich in June that had been postponed from March was the single-owner auction of works from the Müller-Frei collection.

In Koller’s mixed-owner auction of furniture and decorative arts, it was a rare example of 18th century Italian silver that took centre stage.

While the Japanese woodblock print artist Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764) is credited with the first use of one-point perspective in the depiction of interior spaces, a technique previously known only in Western art, his colleague Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814) achieved even greater fame when he mastered the creation of perspective prints of outdoor scenes, known as Uki-e.

Some keenly contested examples of Asian art featured in the large sale held by Schuler in Zurich on March 23-27.

This octagonal brass box, decorated with 17 micro-mosaics featuring subjects from classical antiquity, was created by Augusto Castellani of the famous firm of Roman jewellers founded by his father Fortunato.

Marius Borgeaud (1861-1924) was one of several Swiss painters working in Paris around the turn of the 20th century.