France

Christian Deydier, head of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, sees lobbying for change as one of his most important roles. With help from his Vice-President Hervé Aaron, and Honorary President Philippe Kraemer, Deydier promises to “give it everything when it comes to lobbying… We must make the most of current favourable circumstances.”

A host of other events have been programmed to attract the international buyers expected in France for the Paris Biennale (September 20-29). These range from auctions – Christie’s sale of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti on September 28, or Prunier’s Haute Epoque sale in Louviers on September 22 – through small, specialist fairs (devoted to Asian Art, Decorative Arts and Tribal Art) – to gallery shows.

After decades of wrangling over the reform of their antiquated auction system and a period of uncertainty and inaction among its dealers, the Paris art market starts the 2002 season in an unusually positive frame of mind.

PARIS: A new Paris fair dedicated to Asian Art gets under way later this month. Running from Saturday September 21 to Wednesday September 25, the inaugural Biennale des Arts Asiatiques is timed to coincide with the opening week of the French capital’s Biennale des Antiquaires and takes places at the Carré des Sangliers in the Jardin des Tuileries – just a stroll down the road from the Carrousel du Louvre, where Paris’s most celebrated and glamorous veteran fair is held.

FRANCE: François Curiel has regained his post as head of Christie’s France after the abrupt departure of Dominique-Henri Freiche.

The ceramics highlight of a mixed subject sale at Raymond de Nicolaÿ (17.94/14.35% buyer’s premium) at Drouot on June 26 was this elaborately decorated maiolica charger c.1520, from Deruta, 19in (49cm) in diameter, which made a double-estimate €330,000 (£213,000).

FRANCE: Millon & Associés (17.5/ 13.5% buyer’s premium) June 26 sale included two watercolours taken from an album of drawings by Eugene Delacroix, which the artist presented to Count Charles de Mornay on their return from Morocco in 1832.

FRANCE: THE Louis XVI pyramid clock, 2ft 1in (63cm) and confidently attributed to bronzier François Vion, soared to a double-estimate €200,000 (£129,000), despite the fact that the escapement and pendulum suspension had been replaced, at De Nicolaÿ (15/10% buyer’s premium) on June 26.

TOULON-based, but owned by Britain’s dmg, the Societé Française d’organisation have acquired the Cagnes-sur-Mer Antiques Fair which will be held next in the famous Hippodrome of the town in South-West France from September 12 to 16.

Sales by members of the Paris Compagnie des Commissaires-Priseurs (i.e. all Paris auctioneers bar Christie’s and Sotheby’s) fell 15 per cent in the first half of 2002 to €290m (£187m), as compared to the first six months of 2001.

After 236 years of auctioning wine in London and other international centres, Christie’s will be holding their inaugural sale of fine wines in Paris on September 14.

FRANCE: A stud farm will be the unusual yet appropriate venue for for an auction of all things equines in Orne, Normandy on July 21.

SALES IN PARIS – THE LAFOND COLLECTION: A RAREFIED array of pharmacy jars formed the basis of the former Louis Lafond Collection presented at Briest on June 4. Lafond (1880-1950) was a practising chemist whose unremarkable personal history epitomises that of the dedicated, middle-class, often anonymous buying public that continues to flourish in France and, especially, at the Hôtel Drouot.

Every picture tells a story, but in the case of Théodore Chassériau’s large portrait of Comtesse de Latour-Maubourg, it was condition as much as content that revealed the artist’s state of mind at the time.

Princess Soraya’s father Khalil lived for much of the 1920s in Germany, where he married Soraya’s Russian-born mother Eva Karl in 1926. Soraya was born in Ispahan in 1932, but lived in Germany until she was five, returning to Iran in 1937.

THIS most unusual looking beast is expected to be the star lot at a sale to be held in Paris on July 4 at a most unusual location, the pagoda-like Maison Chinoise, rue de Courcelles, Paris 8.

Jean Goulden (1878-1947) was another name restored to pre-eminence at the Tajan sale on 28 May. Goulden belonged to the Groupe Dunand–Goulden–Jouve–Schmied and himself underwrote the exhibitions the group staged annually at the Galerie Georges-Petit in Paris from 1921 to 1933.

THE Hôtel Drouot, traditional home of Parisian auctions, will not now be sold, it has been announced. Following the withdrawal of all four bids after none could surmount difficulties in negotiating a sale, the auctioneers who own the Drouot have raised €71m (approx £45m) and set up a management company, Drouot Holding, to run it – although not its finances – with seven of their number on the board.

There was a French auction record for Sèvres under the Ferri (17.94%/ 11.96% buyer’s premium) gavel at Drouot on May 24 when the large Empire period fuseau vase, shown here, was offered for sale.

La Guérison de l’Epiléptique, 3ft x 2ft 4in (91 x 70cm), pictured right, by André Bauchand (c.1927), based on Raphael’s Transfiguration, sold on low-estimate for €3800 (£2450) at Blanchet (17.94% buyer’s premium) on May 15, partly reflecting the indifferent condition of its paintwork.