International

Capital comes to life after summer break with fairs, auctions and numerous gallery shows.

Many of the high prices achieved at last week’s ‘celebrity’ sale titled Bob Hawke & Blanche d’Alpuget: Mementos, Curiosities, Art and Design reflected the impact of souvenir hunters, anxious to own a reminder of Australia’s former prime minister who died earlier this year. But not all of them.

The highest prices recorded in a Space Exploration sale on July 20 were for video recordings and documents relating to the Apollo 11 mission that featured the first moon landing, but a much earlier, fictional account of a lunar expedition also impressed.

The Galerie Delalande, which specialises in maritime artefacts, is holding a selling exhibition at its rue de Lille Left Bank gallery devoted to the Roux dynasty of specialist marine painters who hailed from Marseille.

Some of the rarest and most desirable of all English creamware jugs were those made for the American market. One of them, titled Signals at Portland Observatory, sold for $4400/£3600 (plus premium) at the Bourgeault-Horan auction in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

This Gallé marquetry tray is to be offered by the Horta saleroom in its next auction taking place in Brussels on September 9-10.

Our ATG reporters travel far and wide to bring you the best coverage of art and antiques... pictured here is Dealers’ Diary writer Frances Allitt in Brisbane, Australia.

This map of Milan will feature in the sale of books and manuscripts to be held in the city by Il Ponte on September 24.

This Korean gilt bronze figure of the deity Chijang Bosal or Ksitigarbha is dated to the Goryeo dynasty (13th-14th century).

A 9in (22cm) high Lalique clear and green glass bowl in the Gui (Mistletoe) pattern will feature in the sale to be held by Woody Auction in Douglass, Kansas, on September 7.

Among the lots in Christie’s antiquities sale in New York on October 28 is a Greek gold oak wreath from the late Classical to early Hellenistic period, c.4th-3rd century BC.

Works by the Irish artist Paul Henry (1877-1958) appear frequently in Irish and UK salerooms but it is far more unusual for a painting by the Belfast-born painter – whose favoured subject matter was views of the west of Ireland – to emerge in Australia.

Jean Dufy’s (1888-1964) rendition of Le Moulin de la Galette, a famous Parisian landmark immortalised on canvas by many artists, will be offered at AB Levy’s Palm Beach jewellery, art and antiques auction on August 29 in Florida.

It was decades after the First Fleet landed in Sydney cove in 1788 before anything like a recognisable silver trade developed in Australia, writes Jolyon Warwick James.

In stark contrast to the elegant dolls’ houses which took the higher bids at a recent auction (ATG No 2403), a shillelagh was evidence of violence and tragedy in 19th century Ireland.