Europe

The unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Beurret & Bailly (20% buyer’s premium) in Basel was a work by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) which had been considered lost for over a century.

The summer season brought a raft of modern art sales to continental Europe and the various salerooms around Germany were no exception.

Austrian artists figured prominently at the June 20-21 sale at Kinsky (26% buyer’s premium) in Vienna.

The biggest sensation at Scheublein (26% buyer’s premium) in Munich on June 30 was caused by an oil painting of American Indians from the mid-19th century. It was an oil study for a famous painting by Carl Ferdinand Wimar (1828-62), who also went by the name of Charles Wimar.

Sold for €62,500 (£54,825) by German auction house Kiefer (20% buyer’s premium) in a June 30-July 1 sale in Pforzheim was an 1867, Hamburg first edition of the first volume of Karl Marx’s 'Das Kapital'.

Milan’s Navigli district dates to the 12th century and nine centuries later it is full of vintage shops, restaurants and bars, with its canals a great backdrop for the city’s biggest antiques and vintage market.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s much-loved tale of The Little Prince was first published in New York in 1943, with Reynal & Hitchcock issuing it in both French and English versions.

A 1610 first of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius, a foundation work in modern astronomy, sold for €320,000 (£278,400) on June 15 at Minerva Auctions (25/18% buyer’s premium) of Rome.

Bavaria is the most popular tourist destination in Germany and for more than 20 years the historic city of Bamberg has hosted a summer event in which a dozen prestigious dealers and galleries take part in a joint sales exhibition, held in their own premises.

Dealers in and collectors of Asian art were spoilt for choice around the middle of June in Europe. As well as the Asian sale series in Paris (see last week’s ATG, No 2300), a vast selection of works came up for sale in Zurich, Cologne, Brussels, Salzburg and Stuttgart.

A number of the French auction rooms have released their sales figures for the first half of the year, with Christie’s Paris operation taking the top slot.

Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica is one of those rare epoch-making works, a publication that changes everything in its field and sets a standard for others to emulate.

At the Drouot auction centre in June around 3000 items of Asian art went under the hammer in a series of 20 auctions that were either dedicated sales or featured substantial Asian sections.

The island of St Helena featured in a folding plate from a 1598, first English edition of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s famous Itinerario – published as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies – offered by Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) on May 22.