Europe

FRANCE: The French provinces continue to be a rich source of high-level goods as proved by the sale of this 1760s table de milieu with exuberant ormolu mounts attributed to the Roman bronzier Luigi Valadier, plus a marble top set with semi-precious stones, to the Paris trade for Fr6.4m (£610,000, plus 10.865 per cent buyer’s premium), in the sleepy town of Narbonne, south-west France, on April 1.

TWO men have been charged in the United States in a conspiracy to sell the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleu, signed by Napoleon and stolen in 1988 from the French National Archives in Paris.

Rightly described as ‘superbe’ this 28mm diameter portrait of Augustus made a slightly over-estimate E290 (£180).

This energetic charging knight of Philip the Good (1355-83) Count of Brabent (27mm diam.) could have been bought for E1250 (£775).

This 26mm diameter bronze of Brundisii (now Brindisi, and still a naval base in southern Italy) with, appropriately, a fine image of both Neptune and the boy on a dolphin, sold for E340 (£210).

Slightly worn, as they usually come, but with a good portrait, this testone of François I (1515-47 – 28mm diam) sold for E170 (£105).

GERMANY: ONE of the earliest items available at W.G. Herr’s (buyer’s premium 18 per cent + VAT) latest sale on March 17 was an iron and copper Zunftdose (guild member’s box, right), 81/2in (22cm) tall and engraved Magnus Brock Möller der Hunger 1697, that comfortably cleared estimate with DM7500 (£2400).

A fine piece of calligraphy in gold of the Mameluks in Egypt (c.1400AD – 26mm diam.) made an affordable E200 (£125).

AUSTRIA: THERE were three prices of over ASch1m (£50,000) at the Wiener Kunst (20 per cent buyer’s premium) modern art sale on March 6, starting with Rudolf Wacker’s 1924 Puppentheater, 25 x 19in (64 x 47cm), a puppet theatre with rag doll, at ASch2.2m (£100,000). The back of the canvas featured another painting, of boats moored in a small marina.

A fine example of the memorial coinage to Julius Caesar struck by Octavian, this 30mm diameter example with a fine portrait made E1275 (£790).

EIRE: BACK in May last year works by Dublin-born Louis le Brocquy (b.1916) entered the same price bracket as that of his compatriots like Yeats and Lavery when Sotheby’s took a record £1,050,000 (plus buyer’s premium) in London for his work entitled Travelling woman with newspaper.

Buyers who brave harsh winter weather warm to finer furniture UK: THE name of Henry Bone RA (1755-1834) which featured in London's first sale of portrait miniatures this year, was also a feature of the wider ranging sale held by James Adam in Dublin on February 28.

Four lots from a service once owned by the Duke of Orléans were among the more unusual offerings among the stash of 18th century Tournai porcelain presented by Beaussant-Lefèvre at Drouot on March 7.

EIRE: WHYTES of Dublin held their spring coin sale on February 23. Their regular sale results are very useful for gauging the market in Irish material and with the enhancement of the Irish economy in recent years there is much interest in it. This is made manifest by the fact that most of the buyers reported by Whytes are resident in Ireland.

A highly unusual set of five life-size canvases of Javanese princes and courtiers, attracted a deluge of international trade enquiries when they came up for sale at the Copenhagen rooms of Museumsbygningen (25% buyer’s premium) on March 1.

FRANCE: THE largest hoard ever of gold Celtic coins – the French call them Gauloise – is being offered at auction in Paris on March 27. The expert is Alain Weil (54 rue de Richelieu). There are 145 of them and they were issued by the Gaulish tribes of the Cenomanes, who bequeathed their name to present-day le Mans, and the Venetes who dominated the area round Vannes on the south coast of Brittany.

TEFAF Maastricht closed on Sunday with museum-quality goods having sold well – particularly Old Masters, Contemporary art and Oriental – but business was being achieved from the opening party on March 9, when collectors converged on this showstopping pottery model of a recumbent Bactrian camel, 101/2in (27cm) high, on the stand of London specialist Ben Janssens.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading modern art auctioneer, has replaced Etude Tajan as the French member of International Auctioneers, becoming the tenth member of the worldwide auction grouping (alongside Lempertz of Cologne, the Vienna Dorotheum, Zurich’s Galerie Koller, Lawsons of Sydney, Swann Galleries of New York, Butterfields from California, Finarte Milan and Finarte Madrid).

This curious reliquary jewel, 31/2in (8.4cm) tall and with a pin to the back (probably a later addition) for use as a brooch, is a product of the craze for the Napoleonic era that developed in France after Napoleon’s ashes were returned from St Helena in 1840, and culminated in the election of Louis-Napoleon (subsequently Napoleon III) as President in 1848.

ITALY: NOW that Christie’s numismatic sales have been subsumed into Spink’s they are no longer held in London. However, they offered some very appealing pieces in Rome on December 13 and 14.