Austria

ATG picks out 16 recent stand-out items making waves in German, Austrian and Swiss salerooms

There can be no doubt that the 16th century painter of 'Limbus – Christ’s Descent into the Underworld' was inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch.

Star of the show at Dorotheum (28/25% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on November 9 was a large-format Venetian scene, painted by Luigi Querena in 1865.

If Marie Bashkirtseff had her way, the portrait she painted of her cousin in the late 1870s would never have survived, let alone made it to auction.

Two very different timekeepers came up for sale at Kinsky (25% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on July 6-8.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Gustav Klimt was without doubt the most famous Austrian painter, and Josef Hoffmann the most renowned designer and architect.

In the 1960s, the Austrian painter Günter Brus (b.1938) regularly made the headlines with his artistic happenings, which often involved covering himself and his models in paint and on one occasion, in 1965, led to him being arrested.

Our selection of potential stand-out lots in sales across Europe, plus a French tribal art fair

A sight loss charity in London has benefited from a surprise windfall after pictures restituted to the estate of a benefactor were sold at auction in Vienna.

Over many decades, a ‘Viennese Cosmopolitan’ amassed a collection of works of art which are now being sold in the second auction of Tiberius in Vienna.

Among the many paintings on offer at the Old Master sale held by Dorotheum are numerous works that document the vast artistic influence of Caravaggio.

Just before the turn of the century, the Austrian artist Koloman Moser began working as a teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna. He was equally proficient in painting as he was in designing jewellery, silverware or ceramics.

Items designed by Josef Hoffmann, leading light of the Wiener Werkstӓtte movement, will feature in a sale in Vienna.

A painting from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens making its second appearance at Dorotheum (28/25/22/18% buyer’s premium) in the space of a decade was the best-seller in the November 10 Old Masters auction in Vienna.

Throughout his long career, Giorgio de Chirico often returned to the subject ‘Piazza d’Italia’, one of the most familiar images among his metaphysical paintings.

Dorotheum’s auction of wrist and pocket watches in Vienna on November 27 includes this Rolex Dato Compax ref 4768.

A tragic shipwreck provided the Danish marine painter Anton Melbye and his colleague John William Bottomley, a German of Irish origin, with a dramatic subject for their 2ft x 2ft 11in (60 x 90cm) oil painting The Wreck of the Anglo Saxon from 1863.

A bowler hat that once belonged to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria will go under the hammer at Dorotheum on October 19 in the sale of imperial court memorabilia and historical objects in Vienna.

Always likely to produce one of the sale’s best results, a 1798 first of Thomas Malthus’ 'Essay on the Principle of Population' duly led the bidding in a recent German sale.

A bidding battle broke out at Kinsky (28% buyer’s premium) in Vienna for this pair of figures fashioned as King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I, each about 13in (32cm) high.