International

IT took 50 bids and half an hour to auction this RMB370m (£35m) scroll, by Qi Baishi (1864-1957) at Beijing's China Guardian on May 22 – the latest demonstration of the breadth of mainland demand for modern Chinese paintings by the country's most acclaimed artists.

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.

ONE of the USA’s largest regional salerooms, New Orleans Auction Galleries, have filed for bankruptcy protection but struck a deal to keep trading that will ensure all consignors are paid.

THE organisers of the UK’s largest contemporary art fair, Frieze, are launching two new events for 2012.

THE Australian art and antiques industry has formed its own version of the British Art Market Federation following what it calls “several years of uncertainty in the Australian art market”.

THE latest sales of Contemporary art in New York produced some solid results, but buyers were selective and not all the projected highlights fulfilled vendors’ expectations.

THE contstant jockeying for position in the Australian art and antiques auctions market continues with the appointment of Mark Fraser as chairman of Bonhams Australia with immediate effect.

IN a series of high-profile auctions in New York that saw an underperforming run of Impressionist and Modern art sales, the eye-catching price of the week by some distance came for a 19th century historical genre painting.

SOTHEBY’S latest Asian series represented an all-time high for the firm in Hong Kong.

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).

CHINA’s fourth largest auction house, the Beijing Council International Auction Company, have opened an office in the US with the aim of sourcing material to sell in mainland China.

A ROW has erupted after another attempt by South American interests to intervene in a tribal art sale in Paris.

ON April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted out of the earth’s atmosphere in the Vostok 3KA-3 Space Capsule, becoming the first man to travel into space.

REPORTS from Christchurch in New Zealand reveal that an antiques dealer is appealing for help to retrieve his stock before the army demolishes his damaged shop.

A PICTURE discovered in a Suffolk village has sold for Aus$132,000 (£85,715) in Bonhams' saleroom in Sydney, Australia.

CHINA has pushed the United Kingdom into third place as a player in the world art market and is now second only to the United States.

THE saga of the portrait sold by Christie’s in 1998 as ‘19th century German’, but now claimed as a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci, has taken a new turn following the dismissal of the complaint against Christie’s lodged by the work’s consignor.

A PIECE from a celebrated but elusive porcelain service that turned up at the latest sale at Aguttes in Paris understandably caused great excitement.

AN original Monopoly set offered as part of the toy collection of publisher Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) and his sons made $120,000 (plus premium) at a recent auction at Sotheby's New York.