KettererKunst

A copy of the first modern atlas by Abraham Ortelius, which set the standard for all following atlases, will be on offer at Ketterer Kunst in Hamburg on November 29 with an estimate of €80,000.

In terms of improvement on expectations, the most successful lot at a Ketterer Kunst (25% buyer’s premium) sales earlier this year comprised early 19th century paper-cuts.

'Doppelspindel-Rot', a monumental oil on canvas from 1967 by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-68), topped the latest evening sale of Modern and Contemporary art at Ketterer Kunst (25% buyer’s premium) in Munich.

Among the surprises at a Contemporary art sale at Ketterer (25% buyer’s premium) in Munich was the result for a work by the painter-poet Henri Michaux.

Sold for a record €260,000 (£234,235) in Hamburg was a copy of Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer’s Speculum nauticum super navigatione maris occidentalis…

For many decades, Jeanne Mammen was a forgotten artist. In the 1920s-30s she had been a celebrated illustrator and chronicler of the Weimar Republic.

Before he turned to painting cans of soup and Brillo boxes, Andy Warhol had to make a living by more conventional means.

Always likely to produce one of the sale’s best results, a 1798 first of Thomas Malthus’ 'Essay on the Principle of Population' duly led the bidding in a recent German sale.

It is thought that the German artist Adelheid Dietrich (1827-91), renowned for her incredibly detailed still-lifes of fruit and flowers, completed only 50 paintings during her career.

Among the very earliest printed works sold at auction at the end of last year was a beautifully illuminated Biblia Latina printed in August 1462, just seven years after the great Gutenberg Bible.

The German artist Franz von Stuck is generally associated with portraits of sultry, mystical fin-de-siècle women, laden with symbolism.

The most famous book from the first years of printing using moveable type is the Bible produced by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz in the mid-1450s, but in Hamburg on November 25 Ketterer Kunst will be offering another very rare and early Bible.

Running up a total of over €2m on 600 lots, a smaller number than usual, the May 27 sale held by Ketterer Kunst (23/21% buyer’s premium) in Hamburg produced the book department’s best-ever results.

Topping the results list at a recent sale at Grisebach (30/25/20% buyer’s premium) in Berlin was a work by the German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was created on island in the Baltic.

German and Latin versions of ‘Nuremburg Chronicle’ impress in separate sales.

Germany’s most expensive painting sold at auction, an unusual early firearm and a fin de siècle snake charmer are among the highlights featured here from recent auctions in Munich, Berlin and Cologne.

Pride comes before a fall and in the case of Napoleon, Smolensk came before Moscow. On May 18 Ketterer Kunst is selling a 2ft x 2ft 7in (60 x 79cm) scene of Napoleon observing the burning city of Smolensk.

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.