France

Drawing Week, the Paris annual spring celebration staged around the Salon du Dessin fair and a raft of works on paper auctions, takes place in the latter part of this month when the French capital traditionally turns the spotlight on drawings

A fresh-to-the-market ensemble of rosewood furniture by French designer and architect Pierre Chareau (1883- 1950) met with great enthusiasm when it went under the hammer.

A Parisian sale titled Pablo Picasso and his Friends staged at Piasa in France on February 15 included a series of artworks to which the great man had contributed in some way.

Legend has it that Charles Arpels (of Van Cleef & Arpels fame) saw a lady friend stashing her lipstick and other cosmetics in an ordinary cigarette tin for a trip out on the town.

At the peak of his fame, the Anglo-Italian jewellery designer Andrew Grima was invited by Omega to create what would become the About Time collection.

Portrait of monarch impresses as château of the Comtes de Marcellus delivers treasures to auction

An ensemble of modernist rosewood furniture by the designer and architect Pierre Chareau (1883-1950) is to be offered by Valoir Pousse-Cornet auction house.

A faience dinner service that belonged to the famous French novelist George Sand sold for €7000 (£5980) at the Rouillac (24% buyer’s premium inc tax) auction on February 10.

The Barbier-Mueller family is well known as a collecting dynasty, especially for its ethnographic art.

Auction firms in France followed a more traditional course in 2023 according to the latest figures.

As well as being an artist’s model and gallery owner who founded the museum dedicated to the work of the sculptor Aristide Maillol, Dina Vierny was also known as a collector of antique dolls.

A piece of furniture produced for the French king heads back to former repository now open to the public

It was in the hope of saving on the huge sums spent procuring works of art from abroad that Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister of finance, began inviting craftsmen to work at the Gobelins royal manufactory on the outskirts of Paris.

In one of the last auctions to take place at Drouot in 2023, a newly discovered portrait by Jean-Honoré Fragonard was pursued to €2.5m (£2.17m) at Boisgirard-Antonini (30% buyer’s premium).

Very much the highest price in a recent sale held by Beaussant Lefèvre (28% buyer’s premium) at Drouot was the €95,000 (£82,610) paid for a rare Gallé glass vase.

Among the star attractions at the 60-lot evening sale of works from the collection of Hubert Guerrand-Hermès (1940-2016) at Sotheby’s Paris was a carved and regilded Louis XVI chair.