International

US: FLORIDA-based organiser David Lester is negotiating for a new fair in New York City, possibly to be launched as early as October this year.

FRANCE: PHILLIPS' new owners, luxury goods group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, are to acquire Tajan, the leading French auction house.

FRANCE: THANKS in part to the Chateau de Groussay sale staged jointly with Sotheby's, Poulain-Le Fur moved ahead of Piasa in 1999 to rank second in Paris with sales of Fr285m (£27.5m).

FRANCE: FRENCH online auction information company Artprice.com became the first dot.com business to hit the Nouveau Marché Paris on Friday January 21. Its stock was placed at Fr125 (£11.67) per share and the 1.15m shares on offer represent 18.4 per cent of the company capital.

EIRE: ONE of a number of remarkable prices achieved at James Adam & Bonhams' Irish Art sale on December 8 was the record IR£50,000 (£41,665) given for Harry Kernoff's 1936 oil of a Dublin cab.

US: SETTING a new world auction record for a decoy, this sleeping Canada Goose c.1917, by renowned carver Elmer Crowell of East Harwich, Massachusetts, was estimated at $400,000-500,000 by Sotheby's, New York in a joint sale with Guyette and Schmidt of Maine, but sold to Boston dealer Stephen B. O'Brien Jr in the room on behalf of a client at $620,000 (£375,760) plus premium on January 23.

FRANCE'S auction reform bill was given its first reading in the Assemblée Nationale (Lower House) on December 21/22.

FRANCE: CHRISTIE’S France will start the new Millennium by relocating from Rue Paul-Baudry to new premises on Avenue Matignon, just off the Champs-Elysées and some 500 yards from Sotheby’s base on Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré.

EU: BRITAIN’S opponents on the droit de suite issue were in retreat last week with the emergence of telling evidence from France and Germany (the two main champions of artists’ resale rights) that the levy is both damaging to art markets and of little benefit to living artists.

UK: THE exceptional levels of demand recently seen for American pictures impacted on the London salerooms on the evening of December 14 when Bonhams achieved a record £1.4m for Richmond Hill in the Summer of 1862 by the Hudson River School painter Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900).

FRANCE: CHRISTIE’S will move into their new Paris headquarters at 9 Avenue Matignon at the centre of the art and antiques district of the 8th arrondissement on January 3.

FRANCE: THIS anonymous oil-on-paper portrait by Annibale or Agostino Carracci sold 'for around £60,000' at Virginie Pitchal’s Mirror of the Soul exhibition at her Left Bank gallery.

EU: THE FATE of the UK’s flourishing Contemporary and Modern art trade hung in the balance last week after the Government had continued its steadfast opposition to the introduction of droit de suite by frustrating an attempt to push through the directive at the Internal Market Council meeting.

US: AT Christie’s East in New York on November 27, in a sale which reinforced 20th century design as a major market mover, this moulded plywood sculpture by Ray and Charles Eames, dated 1943 and 3ft 11/2in (95cm) high, established a world record price of $330,000 (£206,250) for the designers, selling to a specialist Eames collector.

FRANCE: PIERRE Lellouche, député (MP) for the Drouot district of Paris, has called for the suppression of import VAT on art and a large cut in the rate of droit de suite, the artists’ resale levy.

HONG KONG: There were major series of sales in Hong Kong for Sotheby’s and Christie’s last week with both rooms offering selections of Chinese ceramics and works of art, jewellery and paintings.

US: SOTHEBY’S have opened their new-look, custom-built Manhattan headquarters at 1334 York Avenue, New York, adding six new floors above the four which previously housed the auction house.

SWEDEN at the end of the 19th century was the birthplace of notable inventors of mechanical music who later made their fortunes in America.

US: PROFITS from the catalogue for Christie’s New York’s October 27 and 28 Marilyn Monroe auction may bring as much as the sale itself.

NETHERLANDS: Van Gogh’s oil landscape A Park in Spring, was the highlight of the inaugural exhibition to mark the opening of Sotheby’s new Netherlands headquarters on October 15.