The sale included manuscript song scores by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schubert; the latter’s two-page score for Luisens Antwort, dated 19.10. 1815, was pre-empted for the Austrian Staatsbibliothek in Vienna for Fr350,000 (£33,300).
Sixteen of the sale’s 330 lots were devoted to the Dreyfus Affair, including a folio album of 99 original pencil and ink drawings by Paul Renouard charting the Affair and including sketches of the trials of Dreyfus and Zola. It hit Fr500,000 (£47,600), ten times estimate.
A first edition of Zola’s La Vérité en Marche (1901), evoking the Affair and with Zola’s handwritten dedication to Jean Jaurès, made Fr300,000 (£28,600), 20 times estimate.
Music scores with the museums, but Dreyfus and Zola hit the high notes
PARIS: The Piasa letters and manuscripts sale on December 17 brought Fr7.25m (£690,000) hammer with just 1 per cent bought in, and no fewer than 18 pre-emptions for the Bibliothèque Nationale, Comédie Française, Assemblée Nationale, Musée Victor-Hugo, and the towns of Avignon, Grenoble and Besançon.
