Europe

A rare discovery of two completely unknown paintings by Goya has aroused considerable interest in Madrid. Discovered during a visit to a family in Madrid, the two paintings of Tobias and the Angel and The Holy Family were identified by the picture expert of Alcalá Subastas, Richard de Willermin.

Louise MacBain, who recently quit as chief executive of auctioneers Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, has agreed to acquire Art & Auction magazine from LVMH Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A veritable feast of textiles from an older era will be up for grabs in a big way next month in Paris when French auctioneer Olivier Coutau-Begarie holds a mammoth two-day dispersal at Richelieu-Drouot on April 29 and 30 of over 5000 pieces of antique silks, tapestries and embroideries from the House of Hamot, a French textile retailer and manufacturer of carpets and tapestries.

ON May 6 Vienna’s top auction house, Dorotheum, holds an important Design sale featuring works from the turn of the last century by such luminaries as Adolf Loos, Josef Hofmann and Carlo Bugatti through to some 20 square metres of aluminium flooring from the Berlin Skoda Boutique, designed by Mark Newson in 1992.

CONSIDERING the pervading gloom and doom, exhibitors at the private view of TEFAF Maastricht last Thursday night were surprisingly optimistic and the overall mood at the packed party was distinctly upbeat.

Unseen hoards of silver like this don’t appear on the market very often, so it is little wonder that the UK trade were out in force when it came under the hammer at Christie’s Amsterdam’s (23.2% buyer’s premium) Dutch and foreign silver sale on March 4. The wealth of silver came to light when part of a cellar wall collapsed during the demolition of a house on Breitenstrasse in Bad-Hersfeld, Germany in February 1967.

Specialist sales of Irish material are so few and far between that they are worth enumerating. The celebrated Lockett collec-tion was sold at Glendinings in 1956 and Whytes of Dublin held a landmark sale in April 2000.

LAST month, 14 notebooks containing the gruesome diaries of Anatole Deibler, France’s last public executioner, were sold in Paris at Beaussant-Lefèvre (17.94% buyer’s premium) for €85,000 (£55,600).

Direct competitors to Bonhams Honiton, in an area of the South West that is hardly brimming with quality goods, auctioneer Richard Connor and his team nevertheless put together a respectable offering of brown furniture and paintings at the Honiton Galleries, where the one item of rarity among the silver was this Irish dish ring of above average quality by Edmond Johnson, Dublin 1863, measuring 8in (20cm) diameter, which attracted an above-estimate bid of £2200.

APART from sporadic themed sales held by provincial auctioneers, Camard’s main rival on the French poster auction scene is the Paris-based dealer Frédéric Lozada, who has instituted regular 1000-lot sales in Versailles (the one in late October brought over £250,000) and, most recently, in Lille, where he offered 1120 lots under the Wattebled hammer on December 11-12.

BELGIUM: LIEGE was an important silver centre in the 18th century under its wealthy prince bishops, so it is no surprise that these days the city hosts some of Belgium’s leading silver sales.

Luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault finally abandoned his attempt to compete with Christie’s and Sotheby’s at the top end of the art market last week when he sold his remaining 27.5 per cent stake in troubled auction house Phillips to its joint chief executives Simon de Pury and Daniella Luxembourg.

Gino Severini’s Les objets deviennent peinture (vase bleu et maïs) was one of the most significant lots in Christie’s 310-lot auction of Contemporary art in Rome on December 18. Dating from 1965, this picture was the last oil still life he was to paint and, indeed, one of the last works to be finished before his death.

A full-length Plains Cree Indian male costume from Saskatchewan River in Canada, consisting of a moose-hide shirt, pair of bottom tab leggings, and pair of soft-soled moccasins, sold for €130,000 (£83,300) at Millon & Associés (17.5/13.5% buyer’s premium) on December 2.

NOW in its 42nd year, the Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair will be bigger than ever when it runs from January 31 to February 2 at Wurttembergischer Kunstverfein.

There were two surprising results at the Lempertz Asian Art sale in Cologne on November 22-23. This large, anonymous Japanese 17th/18th century Indian ink and watercolour, Daimyô in Kamishimo with tachibana weapons and two swords on a tatami mat, paper 4ft x 2ft 10in (1.22m x 86cm), right, soared 100 times estimate to make €80,000 (£51,300).

CHRISTIE’S have unveiled some major changes for their 20th century decorative arts policy in Europe. The auction house have closed their King Street department and are concentrating all their London activities in decorative arts at South Kensington. They also want to develop and raise the profile of this field in France with regular dedicated auctions in Paris under specialist Sonja Ganne.

LAUNCHED next September, a new biennial fair organised by France’s national dealers’ association, the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, will be called Le Salon du Collectionneur – Paris.

One of the 2003 saleroom highlights in Paris promises to be the auction of the Collection of André Breton (1896-1966). The 5000-lot collection, consigned by Breton’s daughter and granddaughter, is expected to bring around £20m and will be sold in 24 sessions under the Calmels-Cohen hammer at Drouot from April 1-18.

Tajan, who have made cartoons and comic strips into a saleroom speciality, claimed a saleroom first on November 30: a pioneering opportunity for fans of Lucky Luke, the self-styled “poor lonesome cowboy”, to buy an original plate by his artist Morris.