Europe

There has long been a tradition of summer sales in Monaco, with an emphasis on the luxury goods area of the market: jewellery, watches, handbags and cars. Here are a few stand-out lots coming up.

Unmistakably the work of the Viennese avant-garde, this gem-set silver plated table clock sold for €205,000 (£186,000) at a recent sale held by the Rotterdam auctioneer Vendu Notarishuis.

The antiquarian book trade is lobbying for changes to the proposed EU law designed to crack down on imports of cultural goods ‘more than 250 years old’.

A rare medieval gold head of a saint generated significant interest at a sale in Paris conducted by Pierre Bergé & Associés at the Hôtel Drouot.

This portrait of Maria Luisa Maldonado, Marquesa de Torneros (1907) by the Valencian artist Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) is a highlight of the next auction series at Ansorena to be held from July 17-19.

The Paris high season is a time when classic sales of traditional fare are as much to the fore as buoyant sectors such as Asian, contemporary and modern and tribal art.

Stuttgart auction house Nagel (33% buyer’s premium) held its summer sale of Asian art in Salzburg having acquired an impressive array of quality pieces from European and other collections.

The mammoth disposal of the Aristophil collections of historic manuscripts began last week with a premium-inclusive €17.6m series of seven June auctions offered over four days at Drouot (June 15 and 18-20).

More than 50 works by the French modern sculptor César (1921-98) are on display in the artist’s home city of Marseille.

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.

It took less than five minutes for a work by Max Beckmann (1884-1950) to become the most expensive painting ever sold at a German auction.

The specialist Finnish lighting designer Paavo Tynell proved to be the strong suit in a 111-lot Scandinavian design sale held by Artcurial (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Paris.

The post-war industrial modernist designs of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand remain firm sellers. Pieces from their best-documented commissions, like the furnishings created in the 1950s for the student residences of the Cité Universitaire in Paris, are particularly strong.

Bound together, first editions of both parts of the 1679-83 edition of Maria Sybilla Merian’s study of caterpillars and their transformation into butterflies, Der Raupen…, sold to a Danish bidder for €42,000 (£32,060) in a sale held by Ketterer Kunst (23% buyer’s premium) of Hamburg.

Post-war material is attracting growing interest across all sectors of the art market. A pioneer was the Design sale that championed the creations of designers and taste makers from the second half of the 20th century and beyond.