Europe

Dublin fine art auctioneers James Adam believe uncertainty regarding the euro has helped rather than hindered the Irish art market.

DETAILS have emerged of a brutal and ruthlessly executed robbery which saw two armed men break into the home of an elderly art dealer in Northern Ireland on January 3.

SOTHEBY’S Paris have announced that they have negotiated a private treaty sale to the Louvre for an undisclosed sum of a pair of silver tureens, covers, liners and stands by the French goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste.

Late December is when the Paris rooms traditionally produce their ‘bilan’ or annual sales figures. For 2011, as in 2010, there remain three front runners who are way ahead of the others.

RÉNÉ Lalique is most widely known today for his inter-War glass vases, a field that he moved into after his Art Nouveau jewellery. But he also used glass to create a smaller number of furnishings and interior decors for specific clients.

A new auction record for a medieval work of art was established at Christie's Paris

IN a world where instant electronic communication and exchange of information is available to all, two lengths of original Morse code ticker-tape seem akin to tele-antiquities.

In the wider world, the photographer Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) is best known for the fact that it was in his former studio on the Boulevard des Capucines that the Impressionists held their first group exhibition in 1874.

THE history of France’s famous Sleeper Car Company was commemorated in a single-owner sale at Christie’s in Paris last month.

This week sees the launch of Figaro Enchères, a joint venture between ATG Media and French national newspaper Le Figaro.

Becoming the most expensive painting ever sold in Ireland, A Fair Day, Mayo by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was knocked down at €1m (£917,430) at Adam's lastest sale in Dublin.

CLAUDE Aguttes, the dynamic auctioneer with salerooms at Neuilly and Lyons, has been named president of a new conseil de surveillance or supervisory board to oversee the running of the Hôtel Drouot.

FOUR people have gone on trial in Germany on charges linked to a multi-million pound art fraud exposed as a result of scientific testing on paint.

FRENCH auction houses have won their battle to conduct private treaty sales.

Making a record price for any Venetian view painting at auction, Francesco Guardi's (1712-1793) monumental View of the Rialto Bridge, Looking North, from the Fondamenta del Carbon sold for £23.8m hammer at Sotheby's Old Master evening sale on July 7.

SPIRALLING debts and a lack of prospects have forced the closure of Finarte Casa d’Aste S.p.A., formerly a major player in the Italian auctions scene.

GERMAN fine art auctioneers Ketterer Kunst will move their Hamburg branch to new premises later this month after ten years in the Messberghof.

THE man who oversaw the French Revolution's 'reign of terror' but who finally met his end at the guillotine himself, Maximilien de Robespierre, was back on the block again at the end of last month as Sotheby's auctioned an extraordinary cache of documents in Paris.

FRENCH auction houses have toughened their stance on Chinese bidders after a series of well-publicised problems with non-payment.

THE mammoth, 875-lot, three-day sale from the collections of the Château de Gourdon staged by Christie's in Paris closed last week closed having raised a hammer total of €35.1m (£31.9m).