France

Annie Kevorkian was also the expert at a sale staged by Cannes Auction (19% buyer’s premium) at the Hôtel Martinez on La Croisette on February 20, dominated by a locally-consigned, single-owner collection of Ottoman ceramics.

THE memory of a long-ago, short-lived trade agreement between England and France was rekindled by an extraordinary embroidered waistcoat that surfaced in the Deburaux & Associés sale in Paris on February 11, when it sold to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for €5000 (£3470) plus 20.33% buyer’s premium.

The annual Paris Salon du Dessin will showcase 30 of the world’s premier drawings specialists at the Palais de la Bourse in Paris from March 16-21.

François Tajan, chairman and principal auctioneer of Tajan SA, France’s leading auction firm for many years, is quitting the company and will leave at the end of April.

Two unfamiliar French artists, Gustave Cariot and André Marchand, figured strongly at Tajan’s Modern art sale on January 31.

Franz Xavier Messerschmidt (1736-83) was one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of Western art.

For the second year running, Christie’s posted the highest auction total in Paris, with sales of €86.4m (£61.7m), up five per cent on last year.

Nadar (1820-1910), real name Félix Tournachon, is best known as one of the leading specialists in early photographic portraits.

OVER 2000 lots in the field of 20th Century Decorative Arts were offered for sale in Paris in late November and early December. The most lucrative Art Deco sale, at Christie’s on December 1, ran to 107 lots (93 sold) and yielded a hammer total of €2.04m (£1.43m), with a top price of €340,000 (£238,000) for a lacquered screen by Eileen Gray (c.1915). A 1927 lacquered coffee table by Gaston Suisse, with eggshell and oxidised silver decoration, tripled estimate on €55,000 (£38,500).

THE gap between the French and American art markets has dramatically widened in the past two years.

DAY two of the sale of the Mira Jacob Collection, held by Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby’s (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium), was devoted to prints and illustrated books and yielded €780,000 (£530,000) with all but seven of the 166 lots selling.

DELVAUX and Redon were among eight artists granted solo exhibitions at Jacob’s Bateau Lavoir gallery in Rue de Seine between 1960 and 1986, along with James Ensor, Charles Filiger, Bernadette Kelly, Pierre Klossowski, Marie Laurencin, and Paul Wunderlich – all represented at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium), notably Filiger with 13 lots, and Ensor with eight.

THE Mira Jacob Collection sale at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium) included a smattering of drawings and watercolours by artists outside the dealer’s sphere of influence – from a small Picasso ink sketch of a Glass and Jar, bought in at €44,000, to a Degas pencil portrait of Thérèse Degas, 11 x 8 1/2in (28 x 22cm), which sold at a quadruple-estimate €77,000 (£52,400).

TWO diamonds with a reported value of nearly £8m were were stolen from the Chopard stand at the Paris Biennale.

THE ebullient Samuel Boscher (16.74% buyer’s premium) was in typically sonorous form for his annual two-day summer jamboree in Cherbourg on August 8/9.

CARAYOL'S (19.73/16.14% buyer’s premium) annual two-day sale at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz was staged this year in collaboration with Paris firm Boisgirard & Associés. With muted success; only a quarter of the 800 lots found takers for a hammer total of around €400,000 (£265,000).

OVERLAPPING with the start of the Biennale (September 15-19) will be the third annual Parcours des Mondes, a Left Bank gallery trail featuring 50 tribal art dealers.

JUST a taster for one of the greatest antiques shows on earth, the XX11 Paris Biennale Des Antiquaires, which will run at the Carrousel du Louvre in the heart of the French capital from September 15 to 28, with the vernissage on September 14.

SCULPTURE, which accounted for a quarter of Tajan's (20.33% buyer's premium) August 3-4 sale, fared better than the pictures, with two thirds of the 18 lots finding a taker, although Le Créateur, a small Rodin bronze that began proceedings, fell stone dead – bought in at €15,000 against an estimate of €20,000-30,000.

THE three-session, 630-lot jewellery section of Tajan's (20.33% buyer's premium) August 3-4 sale, with a chirpy attendance of 80-100 throughout, met a more convincing response than the Modern art, bringing €2.7m (£1.8m) hammer, including an aftersale €145,000 (£96,670) for a grey-gold ring with a fancy yellow, rectangular 29.57-carat diamond (estimate €200,000-250,000).