Review by International Auctioneers.
Last June 19th, Artcurial Briest-Poulain-F.Tajan offered at auction a spectacular Vue du Grand Canal avec le Pont du Rialto, by the German artist 
Friedrich Nerlÿ. The painter fell in love with Venice in 1837, where he settled definitely and adopted the Veduta tradition. His paintings give us a vision of La Serenissima which is influenced by middle 19th century’s romantism. With its wonderful conservation status, the View from Grand Canal, valuated between €150.000 and €200.000, was eventually sold €435.200 after a fierce battle between several telephones.
Lempertz’s spring season was the most successful one in decades. The tremendous old masters sale with over 60 highly important 17th C. Dutch paintings was one of the most important ones for many years in Germany. Lempertz achieved a German record for an old master painting with an outstanding work by Gerrit Dou
for €3,785 million. A winter landscape painting by Hendrik Avercamp was sold for a remarkable €1,89 million.
Highlights of the modern department were paintings by de Chirico (€480.000), Paula Modersohn-Becker (€390.000) and Jawlensky (€268.000). The top selling artwork of the contemporary art was a very small painting by Gerhard Richter attracting bidders from all over the world (€390.000). Works by Damien Hirst, Joseph Beuys and Günther Uecker made €244.000 each, but they were surpassed by a large 1996 painting by Emil Schumacher achieving €317.000.
Top lots made high prices at the Koller auction in Zurich on 22 June. An early work by 
Salvador Dalí exceeded its lower estimate with a final price of €1,7 million, as did the 1922 painting Bateaux au mouillage à Locmalo by Paul Signac, for which a European private collector was prepared to pay €1,5 million. Koller achieved €2,75 million for Albert Anker’s Girl Knitting, and thereby continued its run of exceptional results for important Swiss paintings. Furthermore, one of the highest results for a work by Fernando Botero this year was achieved by Koller auctions with €700.000 for the painting Mrs. Rubens.
In Dorotheum, with the auction room filled to capacity, a crowd of telephone bidders competed for the most spectacular painting of the Dorotheum auction on 18th April 2012, the Triumph of David, a work by Lorenzo Lippi. Only at the end of a protracted bidding battle was the painting finally knocked down to an international collector for €870.000, a top result for this artist and several times the expected price. The rural idyll of a Village Scene by the Well by Josse de Momper and Jan Brueghel II found a new owner for €389.300, while the Allegory of Taste, also by Jan Brueghel II went to a telephone bidder for €274.670.
The Florentine painter Giuliano Bugiardini, around 1510, created a strikingly modern three-quarter Portrait of a Lady. This important recent discovery proved to be worth €329.300 to the winning bidder. Another important new discovery, a portrait of probably the most famous art collector and patron in history, Emperor Rudolph II, by the hand of Martino Rota, sold for excellent €260.300, a new world record sale for this artist.
Collectors from all over the globe participated in the bidding for the auction’s excellent selection in May. The highest bid for contemporary art was heard for a scintillating blue wall object by Anish Kapoor, €754.800. Testing the top of the estimated price range, an Italian bidder acquired 
Lucio Fontana’s perforated canvas Concetto spaziale, Attese, dating to 1968, for €583.300.
The cover image of the catalogue Modern Art Les jeunes et les jeux twistent by Max Ernst caused a stir among the bidders and was eventually sold to a bidder from Germany for €605.300. Egon Schiele’s Seated Female Nude, with its clear and reduced lines and its daring point of view, was sold for excellent €398.400. Gustav Klimt’s pencil study 1907 Water Serpent –a female nude lying on her front– far exceeded expectations at €110.100.