International

FRANCE: The 162-lot Piasa (17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) furniture sale on June 25 was 70 per cent sold by lot and brought €1.8m (£1.24m) hammer, with a three-drawered Louis XVI citronwood-veneered bureau plat, with painted metal decoration of arabesques and blue and white medallions, evocative of the work of Pierre Macret (active 1756-85), selling for €340,000 (£234,000) – helped by its leather top with crowned N and imperial corner eagles.

WE frequently comment on the way in which successful dealers have to chase business wherever it may be and a case in point is Mayfair dealer Alistair Sampson who will not be seeing much of his Mount Street, London W1 showrooms once autumn is upon us.

The Collection of Louis Vivien, a Paris bookseller who opened his shop in Rue des Ecoles in 1905, swiftly specialising in the aeronautical world after attending the inaugural Salon Aéronautique of 1908, provided Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) with yet another new sale theme – Aviation – on June 21.

NEW York’s Chinese Porcelain Company hold their autumn exhibition Recent Acquisitions, Fall 2003 from October 9 to 25 at their elegant galleries at 475 Park Avenue at 58th Street. Some highlights from the exhibition will be displayed on their stand at the International Art and Antique Dealers Show at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory from October 17 to 23.

THE latest artistic preference among Australia’s wealthy middle classes appears to be large-scale canvases by John Kelly (b.1965). Born in Bristol, he became an Aussie in the year of his birth when his parents emigrated to Melbourne and throughout his artistic working life, he has immersed himself in Australian iconography but he is particularly celebrated for his paintings of cows.

£36,000 private bid on cabinet shows underlying market strength: BRITISH auctioneers have long looked enviously across the Irish Sea where there still seems a wealth of high-quality furniture coming onto the market from private sources to be welcomed not merely by the trade but also by confident and well-heeled private bidders who have been the dominant force these past ten years and more.

Anyone who has studied the Americana market in any detail will know how important surfaces have become to its many folk art aficionados. Original paint is not just a bonus – it can often be the difference between $1000 and $10,000. And it can happen here, too.

A successful sale isn’t always an instant transaction and one of the more notable features of exhibiting at a fair is follow-on business. This can often take some time to materialise but is nonetheless satisfying, especially when it produces a particularly pleasing conclusion, as was the case with this pair of 18th century Sèvres vases à compartiments, pictured right, which London dealer Robert Compton-Jones of the Woollahra Trading Co. took to the Paris Biennale last September.

ITALY: MORE than 440 lots of silver and Russian works of art were offered at Christie’s (24-18.5% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) sale in Rome on June 12, of which slightly less than half sold.

HONG KONG ASIAN SALES : When SARS broke out in Asia earlier this year, Sotheby’s decided to hold their Asian auction series in Hong Kong as planned in April, but Christie’s postponed their Hong Kong sales until early July. Sotheby’s may not have registered the same levels of Western interest in their two fine Chinese sales on April 27 (the combined 281 lots totalled a premium-inclusive HK$106,481,440), but like Christie’s, they reported increased mainland Chinese buying.

THERE will be plenty of antiques activity in central Paris this autumn, centred on two major fairs each with their quota of high- profile international dealers. A feast for fairgoers, but also behind the scenes a feast for those with a taste for intrigue since, as is so often the case with the Paris trade, there is plenty of politics involved. My Paris-based colleague Simon Hewitt takes a peek behind the arras and reports:

A Massachusetts auction house is being sued for breach of contract and malpractice after a Chinese vase it sold for $23,000 returned to auction six months later at Christie’s Hong Kong where it brought $1.55m.

Coming up in new York: A large complement of classic American posters by James Montgomery Flagg are featured among the WWI and WWII images in Swann Galleries’ annual summer sale of Vintage Posters in the Big Apple on August 6.

SPAIN: The spring and early summer auctions in Madrid were notable for one outstanding sale held at Alcalá Subastas, which generated not only a very large total but also some controversy. Alcalá Subastas (15% buyer’s premium) counts on the considerable expertise of Richard de Willermin as their paintings expert.

Subastas Segre (16% buyer’s premium) held their monthly sale from May 20 to 22. In the picture catalogue, top price was the double-estimate €30,000 (£22,060) for a complete set of Goya’s Caprichos, catalogued as First Edition but not in ideal condition. A 3ft 3in (1m) square abstract oil on canvas of 1982 by Fernando Zobel (1942-1984), whose work is highly regarded in Spain, made €23,700 (£17,425).

FROM August 27 to 31 The Australian Antique Dealers Association hold their third annual AADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair at what the association’s president Charles Aronson assures me is Sydney’s hottest venue, Wharf 8 of the city’s Darling Harbour Passenger Terminal.

Following the Camard auction, the most important 20th Century Decorative Arts sale of the Paris summer season, was that staged by ArtCurial (20.33/17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) at the Hôtel Dassault on July 2.

ON June 17, Finarte-Semenzato held a further sale of furniture and Old Master paintings in Milan, offering almost 540 lots of which less than half sold.

S.J. Shrubsole, the well-known silver dealership of New York, have pleaded guilty to failing to collect around $75,000 in city and state sales taxes on over $900,000 worth of goods. The gallery also pleaded guilty to falsifying tax returns filed with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. They have now paid $150,000 in fines relating to the plea.

With a five-year non-compete clause behind her, Leslie Hindman has returned to the auction world with a new 12,000-square-foot auction room in Chicago’s West Loop.