Europe

THE London Jewish Museum of Art (the Ben Uri Gallery) have announced that they have purchased a crucifixion by Marc Chagall for what they believe to be a fraction of its real value at a Paris auction.

THE Hôtel Drouot was rocked to its foundations on December 2 after a massive police swoop ended with 12 people being taken into custody on suspicion of organised theft.

THE Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé sale mark II was never going to be in the same league as the 374m euros spring extravaganza.

A “ONCE-in-a-century” discovery of Renaissance silver has been bought by the French State for 1.4m euros – less than a week before it was due to go on sale at Sotheby’s in Paris.

ITALIAN auctioneers Finarte have announced that they will no longer make their auction results public because of complaints from both consignors and buyers.

IS there still life in the Irish art market? The auction record for a piece of sculpture by an Irish artist was broken at Adam's 140-lot sale of Irish art on October 14.

PICTURED here is an artist’s impression of one of a cache of easily identifiable antiques stolen from the Spanish home of two retired British antiques dealers.

Christie’s have announced a premium-inclusive £1.2bn ($1.8bn) in sales for the first six months of 2009, down 35 per cent on the same period last year, when results were £1.8bn ($3.5bn).

COLOGNE auctioneers Van Ham offered this oil painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), hidden from public view for over 70 years, at their latest sale.

THE tide has turned in favour of eBay in the legal war over the sale of counterfeit goods on their site after a French court backed them against L’Oreal.

SPECULATION is rising that many more restituted works of art may end up being offered for sale following a ruling made by Vienna’s city council.

Next month a Russian businessman and collector will open the world’s first museum dedicated to the Russian Imperial jeweller Fabergé.

DUTCH police have recovered eight paintings stolen from Robert Noortman’s gallery in Maastricht in 1987. The works, which included valuable works by Renoir and Pissarro, were traced to two small towns in the south of Holland after an alleged middleman in Dubai made an attempt to sell the paintings back to the insurers for a reported €5m (£4.5m).

THE French auctioneers' association SYMEV have launched their annual weekend Follement Marteau to promote buying at auction on March 28-29.

As befitting a sale with world-famous brand associations, Christie’s dispersal of the Yves Saint Laurent–Pierre Bergé collection in Paris was more like a rock concert or fashion show than an auction.

IN Paris the auction year will start in the most spectacular manner with the Yves Saint Laurent/Bergé collection sale on February 23-24. But 2009 holds out promise for the French art market in other areas too.

THE global credit crunch's latest victims are the Moscow World Fine Art Fair and the Salzburg World Fine Art Fair, which will not go ahead this year.

THE appeal of Paris as an auction centre for jewellery received a boost at the start of the year, when France slashed import VAT on “rare” or “high value” jewellery from 19.6 per cent to 5.5 per cent.

The Irish Government have decided to go the same way as the UK in not applying the Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) to the heirs of dead artists until 2012. The extension means that ARR will continue to apply to works by living artists only.