Sotheby's Evening Old Master sale
June 20 2022
Picture: Sotheby's
The catalogues for Sotheby's London Old Master sales are online. Their evening sale is led by a Willem van de Velde the Younger, of The surrender of the Royal Prince during The Four Days' Battle, 11–14 June 1666. The estimate is £4m-£6m, and the cataloguing states that it's being sold by a Dutch cultural institution 'to fund the acquisition of the 1718 Stradivarius violin'. If you have to sell a picture as fine as the van de Velde, then I guess buying a Stradivarius is a good enough reason. The picture was at Sotheby's a decade ago, where it made £5.3m all in, against an estimate of £1.5m-£2.5m. It looks like it has been cleaned since then.
The evening sale has 22 lots, which might speak to issues of supply in the Old Master world at the moment, though Sotheby's also has a British art 'Jubilee' sale, which contains works by Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, and a major £2m-£3m Richard Parkes Bonnington. These works would normally go into an Old Masters sale. The Jubilee sale is on 29th June.
The Sotheby's Day Sale has some very interesting lots, including a long lost self-portrait by David Martin (which I'd expect to go some way above its £20k-£30k estimate) and a rare still life by the deaf British artist Benjamin Ferrers.
