Austria

A late 18th century bust of the Goddess Diana which was looted from the Royal Lazienki Palace in Warsaw by the Nazis has been returned to Poland after emerging at auction in Vienna.

Two rare brooches by Wiener Werkstätte founder Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) caused a sensation when they appeared in the recent Jugendstil and Design auction held at Kinsky in Vienna.

French auctioneers Artcurial are expanding their reach by opening an office in Austria, following on from the Milan and Brussels branches established in 2012.

Leica cameras proved one of the must-have auction prizes in recent sales with record prices at Westlicht in Vienna and Bonhams Hong Kong.

SPEAKING to ATG at the end of last week, London Old Master dealer Johnny Van Haeften still had not actually seen the monumental painting by Frans Francken II (1581-1642) for which he paid 6.1m euros (£5.65m) at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna on April 21.

SPECULATION is rising that many more restituted works of art may end up being offered for sale following a ruling made by Vienna’s city council.

THE global credit crunch's latest victims are the Moscow World Fine Art Fair and the Salzburg World Fine Art Fair, which will not go ahead this year.

A remarkable array of art and antiques seized by the High Court from an Austrian businessman convicted of fraud were sold by a small-scale Buckinghamshire auctioneer last week.

Something of a photographic sensation has suddenly struck the German speaking auction world with a new record price for a 35mm camera seen at WestLicht Photographica Auction (25% buyer’s premium) in Vienna on May 29.

FRANCE: THE centenary of the Wiener Werkstätte, founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903, was commemorated in Vienna with various museum and gallery exhibitions, and two specialist auctions at the city’s main auction houses – the Dorotheum and Wiener Kunst.

ON May 6 Vienna’s top auction house, Dorotheum, holds an important Design sale featuring works from the turn of the last century by such luminaries as Adolf Loos, Josef Hofmann and Carlo Bugatti through to some 20 square metres of aluminium flooring from the Berlin Skoda Boutique, designed by Mark Newson in 1992.

UNTIL November 30 Vienna dealers Michaela and Wolfgang Bauer hold their autumn selling exhibition at their gallery Bel Etage at Mahlerstrasse 15.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s small 1832 child portrait of the future Kaiser Franz Joseph as a Small Grenadier playing with toy soldiers, right, panel 13 x 11in (33.5 x 28cm), led the Wiener Kunst sale in Vienna on June 11 with a low-estimate €150,000 (£97,000).

Austria: This broken pane of glass formed a haunting reminder of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which precipitated World War I.

AUSTRIA: THERE were three prices of over ASch1m (£50,000) at the Wiener Kunst (20 per cent buyer’s premium) modern art sale on March 6, starting with Rudolf Wacker’s 1924 Puppentheater, 25 x 19in (64 x 47cm), a puppet theatre with rag doll, at ASch2.2m (£100,000). The back of the canvas featured another painting, of boats moored in a small marina.

AUSTRIA: THE ENTRY of Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government could have repercussions for the country's art market, warns Otto Hans Ressler, director of Austria's second-largest auction firm Wiener Kunst.