International

Without doubt, the sensation of the German auction season was the emergence of a sketchbook belonging to the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich at Grisebach (32/27% buyer’s premium) in Berlin.

Trained at the Krakow School of Fine Arts as well as the Paris École des Beaux Arts, Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929) is credited for the rise in popularity of symbolism in late 19th and early 20th-century Poland.

Few people can profess to know more about the 1910-12 Japanese Antarctic Expedition than the Arizona book dealer Chet Ross.

Louis de Bayser of the Paris drawings dealership Galerie de Bayser is the president of FAB Paris, the fair organised by Agence d’Événements Culturels (AEC), which also runs the Salon du Dessin.

Held by the same private New England family since 1792, a copy of 'A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean' complete with its map came for sale at Bonhams Skinner (28/26/20% buyer’s premium).

Second edition of the event involving two combined fairs benefits from extra space at new venue

A design for a swan-shaped pendant suspended by a gracefully curved neck and bearing a scene of two more swans is among the highlights at an exhibition on the drawings and sketches of René Lalique (1860-1945).

Pictured here are two paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) appearing on the French auction scene this season within the space of a month - one sold, the other upcoming.

Dealer Peter Harrison has sold a recently reidentified portrait by 17th century painter Mary Beale (1633-99) to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

On December 12 in Paris the auction firm Pescheteau-Badin will be offering this writing table that belonged to Louis XV.

A piece of French cabinetmaking with a provenance to Louis XV came up for sale on November 25 at SGL enchères (26.4% buyer’s premium inc tax).

Collection from unnamed vendor supplies some of the highest prices in a sale at the Drouot centre

From 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' to 'The Last Duel', films nearly always depict the Middle Ages as dark, dingy and beset by bad weather.

Among the many highlights of the Alan and Simone Hartman collection at Bonhams New York is a copy of the monumental catalogue of the famed Bishop collection of Chinese jades. The deluxe volume, once owned by the last tsar of Russia, carries expectations of $100,000-150,000 as part of the 114-lot dispersal on December 14.

The Christmas Rare Books & Collectors sale at Irish auction house Fonsie Mealy on December 12-13 includes No33 of only 150 copies in a limited special edition of Bog Poems by Seamus Heaney illustrated by Barrie Cooke (London, Rainbow Press, 1975).

A group of letters sent from a clipper ship captain in Shanghai during the Second Opium War (1856-60) to his sons in the Charlestown area of Boston resounded with bidders at Merrill’s Auctioneers (21% buyer’s premium) in Williston, Vermont on November 3.

Scrap of paper came as result of half a manuscript book being chewed into ‘confetti’ by Steinbeck’s dog

On December 8 Beaussant-Lefèvre is holding a sale that will feature a number of examples of Gallé glass including this early piece.