Europe

A SALE at the Hotel Drouot in Paris devoted to minor works by Picasso was called off at the last minute because of controversy over provenance.

TEN leading Parisian Old Master galleries have announced plans to launch a select new fair in the French capital next year.

It could be less than a month until the date is named when antiquities dealer Malcolm Hay will be extradited to serve a four-year jail sentence in Greece – on the strength of no credible evidence.

SOTHEBY’S set a new auction record for a jewel in Geneva when a 24.78-carat fancy intense pink diamond sold to London jeweller Laurence Graff at SFr40.5m (£25.6m) plus premium.

PARIS furniture dealer Hervé Aaron was removed as President of France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) at its AGM on October 25 – to be replaced by the man he ousted two years ago, Christian Deydier.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

THE spectre of a nationalised Drouot haunted delegates at the Annual Congress of French auctioneers’ union SYMEV, held at Artcurial’s Champs-Elysées premises earlier this month.

THE Hotel Drouot, the communal auction facility used by most Paris auctioneers, faces an even bigger overhaul than expected after the French Justice Minister’s scathing report about its culture and working practices.

A COLLECTION of 85 bosuns’ calls was among items stolen from a home in Milan in early August. Most of the calls were British, but there were also examples from the USA, Italy, China and India.

THE October 8 toy sale at Nagel in Stuttgart will include this Märklin gauge-1 model of the Stuttgart train station.

IT may have been an exceptional piece that generated an equally exceptional level of presale interest but, even still, few people present at Christie's Paris for the sale of Amedeo Modigliai's (1884-1920) Tête were expecting it to become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in France.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

FIVE modern paintings, thought to be worth a total of over £90m, were stolen during the night of May 19-20 from the City of Paris Modern Art Museum.

ATG’s parent company, ATG Media, has agreed to provide the technology for the first live internet bidding site in Germany.

THE Greek courts have agreed not to pursue dealer Malcolm Hay any further pending his appeal against his conviction for trading in stolen antiquities.

GIORGIO Corbelli, president of Italian auction house Finarte, has been given a 20-month jail sentence on charges related to financial dishonesty.

LAPADA chief executive Sarah Percy-Davies has made significant inroads into the Russian domestic market on behalf of British dealers as part of an official British trade delegation.

SPEAKING to ATG at the end of last week, London Old Master dealer Johnny Van Haeften still had not actually seen the monumental painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) for which he paid 6.1m euros (£5.65m) at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna on April 21.