Category: Auctions
The Hirst 'record' that wasn't
February 9 2015
Picture: Christie's
Colin Gleadell of The Telegraph alerts us to an interesting Damien Hirst coming up for sale at Christie's on Wednesday (11th Feb), called Lullaby Winter. The pill cabinet was sold in New York on 16th May 2007 for $7.4m, but, says Gleadell, was never paid for. Having guaranteed the lot before the 2007 sale, Christie's were obliged to take ownership of the piece themselves. Now it is on offer with an estimate of £2.5m-£4m.
Will Christie's recoup their investment? Last time around, the piece was estimated at $2.5m-$3.5m, and the guarantee was probably at around the lower estimate. So if the piece sells at the lower estimate this time, Christie's are ok. I bet you it does sell - a failure would be too alarming for the value of everyone else's Hirsts.
The current Christie's catalogue makes no mention of the 2007 sale, or the buyer's failure to pay. But of course, the 2007 'price' has remained on the Christie's sale database all these years, helping to bolster other Hirst works.
Can we judge what effect the apparent $7.4m 'sale' had on the Hirst market in 2007 and subsequently? At the time, $7.4m represented a new auction record for Hirst, more than doubling the previous record of $3m for a pickled sheep sold at Christie's in 2006* (according to a list of prices on the Blouin Art Sales Index).
Speaking to Bloomberg at the time, Sotheby's Oliver Barker said that the apparent high price fetched by Lullaby Winter made the owner of a comparable work, Lullaby Spring, keener to sell:
'The record prices for Damien are all for his sculptural works,' he said. The price Christie's got for Lullaby Winter made the owner of Lullaby Spring more willing to sell, according to Barker.
Lullaby Spring was estimated at £3m-£4m when it was sold on 21st June 2007, and fetched £9.65m - a figure that was duly hailed as 'a new auction record' for Hirst, indeed for any living artist. As far as we know, the buyer of Lullaby Spring duly paid up. But if Lullaby Winter doesn't do well on Wednesday, they may be wishing they hadn't...
Actually, if I was the owner of Lullaby Spring, I'd already be worried that Christie's are not more confident in marketing Lullaby Winter. Surely, with the current contemporary art boom showing no signs of flagging, Lullaby Spring should be on the block for more than £2.5m-£4m.
Inevitably, there's some good guff in the catalogue note for Lullaby Winter, which says, with unintended irony:
As with so much of the artist’s work, the pill cabinets are fundamentally about our sociological need to construct belief systems out of nothing, about our need to come to terms with the often-mysterious fabric of existence. Lullaby Winter addresses this need and the aesthetic allure of the pills is rendered useless in the face of their unknown medical purpose, as Hirst reminds, ‘we have to simply believe that somehow our ills will be cured.’
That's the contemporary art market in a phrase there folks - 'simply believe...'
* People from the future, I am not making this up.
Update - a reader writes:
I think Damien Hirst must spend most of his day giggling uncontrollably at his skill in fooling people endlessly…
Update II - I've done a little more digging on how the Hirst 'record' was reported in 2007. Here's The Guardian:
new records were also set by the British artist Damien Hirst whose rise to pre-eminence as one of the world's most profitable artists continued with the sale of Lullaby Winter for $7.4m. The work, a rainbow-like arrangement of pharmaceutical pills set in a frame against a metallic background, had been expected to sell for less than half that amount.
Here was the FT:
If a visitor to London’s vibrant cultural scene were seeking a metaphor to describe the crazed buoyancy of the contemporary art market, here it is. The past couple of weeks have seen further records tumble for contemporary artists at auction, including Hirst’s own, when “Lullaby Winter”, one of his medicine cabinet altars, sold for $7.4m at Christie’s New York. [...] Hirst, who has already amassed a personal fortune of £130m, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, is hotter, and richer, than ever.
Here was the New York Times:
Damien Hirst's prankish selections of "things" displayed in cases or dipped in glass tanks holding a formaldehyde solution made a spectacular progression, jumping from $3.37 million - given in May 2006 at Christie's New York for "Away from the flock, divided" - to $7.43 million paid this week for "Lullaby Winter," a title describing the parody of a medicine cabinet.
And here was The Art Newspaper looking at the wider Hirst price levels around that time:
Rumour has it that the Doig record was like a red rag to a bull for those in the Damien Hirst camp, while devotees of Lucian Freud thought that the senior painter was the rightful title-bearer. Since an auction record usually leads to a rise in prices for all the artist’s works, dealers and collectors (and a growing number of hybrid dealer-collectors) have a major stake in such accolades because they can have a serious impact on the value of their inventory.
Not surprisingly, last June at Christie’s in London (a few months after the Doig record was set), Freud’s Bruce Bernard, a connoisseur’s picture from 1992, knocked White Canoe off the top spot by selling for £7.9m ($15.7m). The next night at Sotheby’s in London, the sombre Freud was whacked off its pedestal by Hirst’s Lullaby Spring, 2002, which sold for a whopping £9.7m ($19.2m). Most importantly, Hirst grabbed the coveted worldwide title, which Johns had held (on and off) for 19 years.
Lullaby Spring is part of a seasonal series of four, but some 20 other large-scale pill cabinets are said to exist. Only the month before, its near-identical sibling Lullaby Winter, 2002, had sold for a mere $7.4m at Christie’s New York. Sometimes the consignor can add value; in the case of Lullaby Spring, New York lawyer Joel Mallin provided respectable, but not what one would describe as premium provenance. Some insiders pointed to the fact that Lullaby Spring’s little pills were more vibrantly coloured than Lullaby Winter’s, but the logic behind the $12m price gap lies elsewhere. Nobody understands better than an auction house that price appreciation of this magnitude is seldom intrinsic to the work.
Whereas Christie’s rarely puts all its marketing muscle behind a single work of art, choosing instead to promote a handful of lots on its front, back and inside catalogue covers, Sotheby’s marketing of contemporary works has tended to be doggedly single-minded. Much like their handling of Doig’s White Canoe, Lullaby Spring enjoyed a wrap-around cover. This time, however, their on-message communications predicted a new living artist auction record. In both cases, Sotheby’s had their reasons. With the Doig, they owned (or partially owned) six paintings by the artist, so it was imperative that this first work to hit the block should sell well. With Hirst, the logic was a little different. Since the Pharmacy sale in which Hirst made the unprecedented move of taking his own work to auction, Sotheby’s London had enjoyed a positive alliance with the artist as well as strong relationships with his primary dealers and loyal stockholders. The opportunity for a record was clear, if only they get could the right people interested.
Also worth noting is the Christie's press release for Wednesday's sale. It makes no mention of the non sale in 2007, but pushes instead the Sotheby's sale of Lullaby Spring for £9.65m, which of course was set immediately after the 'sale' of Lullaby Winter:
Damien Hirst’s iconic pill cabinet Lullaby Winter, 2002 is to be offered at Christie’s in February (estimate: £2.5-4million). Another from the series of four cabinets named after the four seasons, Lullaby Spring, sold at auction in 2007 for £9.65million, breaking the record for a work by a European living artist at the time of sale. Just as Monet painted the four seasons, Hirst captures the winter atmosphere with his assembly of thousands of beautifully hand-crafted pills. Precisely positioned on razor-sharp shelving and enshrined within a perfect, mirrored surgical steel cabinet, these pills number the amount a single human might expect to consume in a lifetime.
New Veronese drawing discovered? (ctd.)
February 3 2015
Picture: The Saleroom
A quick update on a 'sleeper' story I featured last year. The above drawing came up for sale in the shires here in the UK catalogued as 'attributed to Veronese', and made £15,500.
At the time, a sharp-eyed reader (who underbid it) wrote in to say he thought it was by Jan van der Straet, and related to an engraving in the British Museum. Well, he was right, for now the picture has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as by van der Straet. The provenance on the Met site reveals that it was acquired through the Old Master drawings dealer Katrin Bellinger.
Who painted the Met's 'English School'?
February 2 2015
Picture: Sotheby's
The Metropolitan Museum in New York sold the above, 19th Century 'English School' landscape at Sotheby's last week. It was estimated at $25k-$35k, but made $197,000. An optimistic bidder thinking it was by Gainsborough? I hope not, because it isn't.
But it is by someone good, probably early to mid 19th Century. I give up entirely in about 1820, so I've no idea who painted it. But I'd wager it'll turn up somewhere in the trade soon, with the attribution nailed. In which case, do we have to ask, why did the Met sell it?
Update - a reader suggests 'Swiss School':
[...] a closer look at the trees and foliage may suggest to me a lost composition by Pierre-Louis de Larive-Godefroy (1735-1817). He was a key painter from the Geneva school in the last decades of the XVIII century and very much influenced by XVII century Dutch landscape. A painting by him of this size and quality would definitely command the price paid at the auction.
Update II - Another reader sends in the below photo of the painting at Sotheby's view, and writes:
The ex-Met landscape: the general feeling is that it’s Ramsay Richard Reinagle. [...]
A stupid sell-off by the Met. It used to hang in the British period rooms.
It was a picture of remarkable quality - not a run-of-the mill landscape at all. And the Met’s British picture collection is not strong enough so they can afford to lose a picture like this.
Export block for newly discovered Claude
February 2 2015
Picture: Guardian/DCMS
The UK government has placed a temporary export block on Claude's Embarkation of St Paula, which was recently discovered by Christie's, and sold by them in 2013 for £5m. A UK museum has until May 1st to express any interest.
The picture was scheduled to be sold in a minor Christie's South Kensington sale as 'After Claude', but was pulled out at the last minute.
More here.
Sotheby's wins, $63.5m vs $25m
January 31 2015
Picture: Sotheby's
It was a pretty impressive trouncing by Sotheby's in the New York Old Master sales this year. The headline totals of $63.5m & $25m include both auction houses' seperate 'Renaissance' sales. Take those out and just stick to the 'Part 1' sales, and the totals are Sotheby's $57m vs Christie's $9.2m. That's not even a contest.
The 'Part 2' sales were also a bit of mismatch: Sotheby's $10.2m vs Christie's $2.9m.
For comparison, below are the totals for the 'Part 1' sales going back over the last seven years, together which whatever major seperate sales the auction houses have also held (be it a 'Renaissance' sale or, for one year only at Christie's, 'The Art of France'). I've included only the January sales, as these are the larger of the two annual sales in New York (similarly, in London, the July sales are traditionally seen as the more important of London's two annual sales):
Christie's
- Jan 15 $25m (Part 1 $9.2m & Renaissance $15.7m)
- Jan 14 $60.7m (Part 1 $15.8m & Renaissance $44.9m)
- Jan 13 $62.5m (Part 1 $19.9m & Renaissance $42.6m)
- Jan 12 $44.3m (Part 1 $34.3m & 'Art of France' $10m)
- Jan 11 $28.1m
- Jan 10 $39.5m
- Jan 09 $15.1m
Sotheby's
- Jan 15 $63.5m (Part 1 $57m & Renaissance $6.5m)
- Jan 14 $67.7m (Part 1 £51.3 & 'Courts of Europe' $16.4m)
- Jan 13 $72.1m (Part 1 $58.2 & 'Baroni Estate' $13.8m)
- Jan 12 $62m
- Jan 11 $102.5m (Part 1 $90.6m & Safra Collection $11.9m)
- Jan 10 $61.6m
- Jan 09 $63.9m
Totals
- Christie's $275.2m (average $39.3m)
- Sotheby's $493.3m (average $70.5m)
I hope I haven't missed anything out. But it seems that Sotheby's have consistently had the better results. I know the headline totals are chicken feed compared to contemporary, but this is the sort of performance Sotheby's activist shareholder Dan Loeb should think about next time he slags the company off.
How, then, do Sotheby's New York do it? My impression over the years is that they usually manage to capture the better pictures, which of course is essential. Maybe it helps too that they have the better premises (by some distance). A key ingredient of their success (but an underrated one perhaps) is that they have Henry Wyndham (above) at the rostrum - for me, the best auctioneer in the business; cajoling bids out of the punters is a real art, and harder than it looks. But also, as one leading New York Old Master dealer writes:
Somehow George and Christopher can really sell their pictures. I am always in admiration of how they do it.
Me too. The George and Christopher referred to are George Wachter and Christopher Apostle, the two long-standing heads of Sotheby's Old Master department in New York. Wachter is above closest to Henry Wyndham, and Apostle is far left. I know the latter better - and can attest that he's one of the good guys in the art trade - but both have always struck me as formidable operators, as well as having an excellent 'eye'. Whatever it is, they're unbeatable at the moment.
Christie's: 'We are not an auction house any more'
January 20 2015
Picture: TAN
The Art Newspaper has the latest annual sales figures from Sotheby's and Christie's. The latter edges Sotheby's by some $800m, with total sales of $6.8bn vs $6bn.
Given Christie's... shall we say 'looser' manner of reporting the sale totals of high-profile guarantor lots, I guess we can't be absolutely sure that their total figure really is $6.8bn.* But it won't be far off.
Christie's new Global President, Jussi Pylkkänen, says that such are Christie's sales in every market and in every corner of the globe that they're "not an auction house anymore". Hmm.
* On this point, I was interested to read a remark from the eminent art market lawyer Pierre Valentin of Constantine Cannon, who told the Art Media Agency:
“we could see certain auction practices drawing the attention of regulatory authorities in the US or the UK. This could result in a public investigation which may derail the current trend of high auction prices in the contemporary art market, and renewed calls for greater regulation of the art market.”
Whatever can he be referring to?
Update - there's an interesting article in the invaluable Antiques Trade Gazette by the editor Ivan Macquisten on the guarantee business:
[...] the third-party guarantee, also known as the irrevocable bid, could prove to be one of the biggest threats to a market attempting to stave off direct regulation.
The chief motivation for introducing it - to offset risk onto a third party - is clear enough and understandable. However, this esoteric arrangement raises too many questions and much suspicion among outsiders. The agreed purchase level must at least meet the reserve and, one assumes, cannot rise above the low estimate if bidders are not to be misled. But, this all has to be taken on trust as the auction houses guard the details jealously.
It's one thing asking wealthy top-tier collectors to take a punt on works they may or may not want in return for a share of the profits should the guarantee level be met by another buyer.
However, as far back as 2011 The Economist reported a list of leading dealers as guaranteeing works at auction. It remains unclear whether the trade are guaranteeing works by artists they represent directly or have a clear financial interest in propping up, but if so, then this is surely a step too far along the road of market manipulation.
It might be clever; it might even be legal, but as far as I (and I suspect the man in the street) am concerned, one thing is certain: it isn't right.
My guess is that it won't be long before other people of influence outside the art market take the same view and if this is the sort of thing going on when that happens then there will be trouble.
The public spotlight will turn its full glare on the way the whole industry does business. Are we ready for that?
Nope.
Fashion in Old Masters
January 14 2015
Video: Sotheby's
This is a great video from Sotheby's, on fashion in Old Master pictures. The standard of these little films is getting better and better. In the past they've tended to be a bit estate-agenty - and too male - but now they're getting more inventive. And here we have a star in the making with Sotheby's specialist Jonquil O'Reilly, who tells us about fashion and haircuts in renaissance paintings in an informative, even humorous way.
Auction houses and Old Master dealers often wonder how to attract new audiences to look at, let alone buy, Old Master paintings. This video from Sotheby's also asks the same question, but provides less convincing answers. One of the best ways to do it is in the straightforward, engaging manner we see in O'Reilly's film; take a matter people think about in their daily lives - like haircuts and what clothes to wear - and show how the same concerns were addressed in, say, the 16th Century.
The same solution is advocated by the National Gallery's 17th Century curator Betsy Wiesman who says (in this story on the BBC):
"The way you make Old Master paintings relevant is to find a good hook in terms of explaining the social and historical context, which is fascinating when told in the right way."
'Told in the right way' is important, of course, and the main thing to avoid is any suggestion of dumbing down.
New Constable discovery at Sotheby's
January 9 2015
Picture: Sotheby's
One of the star pictures at Sotheby's forthcoming Old Master sale in New York is, reports Martin Bailey of The Art Newspaper, a sleeper from a minor Christie's sale in London. Constable's study for Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows is for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of $2m-$3m, but was sold by Christie's at South Kensington for just £3500 in 2013. There, it was catalogued as by a 'follower' of Constable, in a sale of the contents of Hambleden Hall, the home of the Viscounts Hambleden. It had been in their collection since the late 19th Century. Says The Art Newspaper:
When the oil sketch came up for sale at South Kensington in July 2013, Christie’s catalogued it as by a “follower of John Constable” and estimated it at £500-£800. The unnamed buyer later confirmed that the work had been heavily retouched in the late 19th or early 20th century, depriving it of its lively, sketchy quality, but it has now been cleaned.
The painting was examined by Anne Lyles, a specialist on Constable, who dated it to 1829-30. She determined that the oil sketch is by the artist’s hand and was among the preparatory works for the final painting, which Tate bought in 2013 for £23m. Lyles describes the study as “one of the most exciting and important additions to the master’s oeuvre to have emerged in recent decades”.
I saw the picture at Sotheby's preview last year in London, and had no doubt whatsoever that it's 'right'. And that was before I read Anne Lyles' persuasive essay in Sotheby's catalogue, which places the picture in its context, and analyses all the key evidence. One of her conclusions is that Constable - who was in the habit of making numerous preparatory sketches and studies for his large scale landscapes - relied on the Hambleden picture most when making the final painting, which (having been recently bought) is now in Tate Britain.
One of the clinchers in the Hambleden picture's favour is that the dramatic, horn-shaped cloud formation it shows looming over the cathedral was copied by Constable for a larger sketch in the Guildhall art collection in London. But, crucially, Constable then painted over that horn-shaped cloud, to make the sky slightly less stormy in that area. Over time, that original cloud structure has become visible through the paint layers; if you look at the image of the Guildhall picture above you can just make out the 'horn shape' to the right of the spire, underneath Constable's later cloud formation. The point is - and apologies for my rather unscientific cloud descriptions - the Hambleden painting cannot be the work of a copyist, because only Constable himself developed that structure of the sky. As Anne Lyles says in her note:
[...] all the other preparatory sketches show the cathedral building more or less in shadow [...]. Moreover, the dramatic stormy sky in the full-scale sketch in the Guildhall (fig. 4) also derives more closely from the Hambleden study than the other sketches. Indeed the cluster of black storm clouds in the full-scale sketch to the right of the cathedral spire was once closer in appearance to the formation seen in the Hambleden picture until Constable decided to knock them back in the former by overpainting parts of them in white.
Anyway, the other clincher for me was the sheer quality of the painting. It's too good to be a copy. Yes, some elements, such as the structure of the cathedral are a little simplistic, but that's to be expected in a study like this, for the emphasis, the compositional development, is all about areas like the sky and stream, and they're pure Constable. For what it's worth, I also know that Anne Lyles - who used to be the Constable scholar at Tate Britain* - is no pushover when it comes to endorsing Constable attributions. So if it's good enough for her, that means it's really good.
Now, here's the humbling bit - I missed the picture entirely when it came up at Christie's South Kensington, in July 2013. Indeed, I also missed the other 'sleeper' in that sale, The Embarkation of St Paula, which (regular readers will remember) was catalogued as a copy after Claude, but which was withdrawn at the very last moment and sold for £5m at Christie's main salerooms in London in December 2013. In my defence, the South Kensington sale was in the week immediately after all the main Old Master sales, and after South Kensington's own Old Master sale, when you'd normally expect things like the Constable to be sold. Also, the sale was branded as 'Colefax and Fowler [famous English interior decorators], Then and Now', so it sounded like the sort of sale you'd only find chintzy sofas in. Anyway, the fact is, I had my eye off the ball, and can only congratulate the sharp-eyed buyer.
But, AHNers, we must also sympathise with the buyer as well as congratulate them. For when the main press picked up The Art Newspaper's story today (e.g. here in The Mail), Christie's gave this rather unhelpful comment:
'We took the view at the time of our sale in 2013 that it was by a 'follower of'. We understand that there is no clear consensus of expertise on the new attribution.'
Which I think is a little mean, to be honest. Who are the dissenters? Christie's should say so, rather than just casting unspecified doubts like that. I suspect the truth is that no serious Constable scholars doubt it. The Mail's coverage also looks into whether Christie's might be vulnerable to legal action from the Hambleden vendors, and the paper quotes the editor of the Antiques Trade Gazzette, Ivan Macquisten:
'There was a legal case in 1990 that set a precedent for this when provincial auctioneers Messenger May Baverstock of Surrey failed to recognise something that ended up selling for a lot more and was sued by the vendor.
'In the High Court, a judge established a degree of responsibility that auctioneers have.
'If you are a small auction house holding your sales in a village hall it is reasonable that you may not identify such a painting.
'But if you are a Sotheby's or a Christie's with specialists departments with some of the leading specialists in the world, then you probably are. The burden on these bigger auction houses to get it right is far higher.
'That is not to say they are negligent or liable, that depends on how easily the work would be to identify and what due diligence was carried out to identify it.
'Have they been negligent by not carrying out checks on things like the composition of the painting and, in the case of Constable who was known for his cloudscapes, the quality of the clouds?
'I would be surprised if the previous vendor was not considering taking the matter further.'
Factors in Christie's defence include: the fact that the general subject matter - Constable's 'Salisbury Cathedral' - is one of the more copied compositions in British art, and Christie's were thus not negligent in assuming the Hambleden picture was another; the fact that the picture was quite heavily overpainted, thus making certain elements hard to read; the fact that the sale price of £3,500 meant that only one other person thought it worth taking a closer look at.
In favour of the Hambledens, should they wish to pursue the matter: the fact that Christie's evidently did not show it to Anne Lyles, the leading Constable authority, before the sale; the fact that Christie's only recognised at the last minute that there was a £5m Claude in the same sale, which suggests that, when preparing the sale, not as great care was taken with the pictures as one might expect; the fact that Christie's did not put in the catalogue entry the fact that the painting might have had a 19th Century Christie's provenance.
But it's a very difficult area, and I wouldn't want to place too much blame on Christie's specialists. They work to extremely tight deadlines, and, especially in house sale situations, they only get a short period of time to look at each picture. Inevitably, things will slip through the net. Probably the culprit here, if there is one, is the system in which auction house specialists have to operate - if the bean counters further up the food chain gave them more time and staff, fewer mistakes might be made. But then what would we all do without the occasional discovery story?
* It's a matter of great regret that they don't have one any more, of course.
New York Old Master sales
January 6 2015
Picture: Christie's
The catalogues for Christie's and Sotheby's New York January Old Master sales have gone online. Sotheby's had theirs up long before Christmas; Christie's went up yesterday. Therefore, over the holiday, yours truly pressed refresh quite a few times on the Christie's website.
To be honest, though, when the Christie's sale did go online, I skipped through it mighty quick. There's a few nice things, including this depiction of 17th Century dentistry by Guido Reni at $1.2m-$1.8m, and a pair of Canalettos at $3m-$5m.
There's also an interesting painting attributed in full to Caravaggio, above, which, as the literature listing makes pretty clear, has variously been called both 'Caravaggio' and a copy right up until the most recent catalogue raisonné, by John Spike, who said it was a copy. In their catalogue note, Christie's cites the opinion of the Met's Keith Christiansen:
Keith Christiansen, who has closely studied the present painting, considers it to be among the finest of surviving versions, but notes that it is difficult to go beyond this judgment, given the picture’s condition. He notes that at this early date, when Caravaggio was working for the market, the artist may well have painted more than one version. For Christiansen, that in the Queen’s collection (Hampton Court) is the best preserved and the most convincing of the versions that he knows.
Not much of an endorsement. Here's the Royal Collection picture. It's better.
Christie's note continues:
Interestingly, the contours of the Queen’s Boy peeling a fruit line up precisely with our painting, suggesting that the two were made from a common design.
Or that it's a copy. Then the catalogue mentions an X-ray:
The x-radiograph of the present work (fig. 4) does not reveal any tracing, and primarily shows that Caravaggio built up the folds of the boy’s shirt with lead white.
An artist using lead white for the shirt? It must be Caravaggio. The estimate is $3m-$5m. And for that I'd expect a better catalogue note. Still, the note concludes with this roster of those who support, or supported, the attribution:
While its autograph status has been questioned by some over the past several decades, many scholars support the attribution to Caravaggio, including Sir Denis Mahon, Barry Nicolson, John Gash, Luigi Salerno, Mina Gregori, and Beverly Louise Brown.
Christie's, as is their habit of late, has a seperate 'Renaissance' sale, the highlight of which is a Bronzino portrait, with an estimate of $8m-$12m. This picture failed to sell in 2013 at $12m-$18m. It's still a little expensive, it seems to me. The cataloguing is interesting, as, doubtless in a bid for the 'cross-over' market, they're straining to make a contemporary resonance angle:
The reverberation of this golden age of portraiture [by the likes of Bronzino] haunts us even today in ways as varied as the original function of the older paintings. A celebrated artist who adapted the conventions and superficial appearance of Renaissance portraiture for her own ends is Cindy Sherman, whose History Portraits (1988-1990) ransack sources as readily identifiable as Raphael’s La Fornarina (Untitled 205) or as generic as Untitled 209, a portrait of a lady in an elaborate 16th-century costume who confronts the viewer with all the haughtiness of a Bronzino aristocrat. Naturally art using photography, or Sherman’s performance art version of it, lends itself to the appropriation of historical images, and with no post-war artist was this accomplished to greater effect than with Joseph Cornell, whose Medici Slot Machines were executed in the 1940s and 50s using printed reproductions of such paintings as the Portrait of Bia de Medici by Bronzino (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) (fig. 1), which gaze poignantly out at us from behind the glass, part devotional object, part arcade entertainment.
In fact, I think that's the point of the stand alone 'Renaissance' sales - they're meant to appeal to modern and contemporary buyers. Doubtless 'baroque' or 'rococo' wouldn't quite work in the same way.
Sotheby's has the richer sale, with a monochrome Van de Velde maritime picture at $2m-$3m, a study by Constable of Salisbury Cathedral also at $2m-$3m, a Ribera of St Paul at $600k-$800k, and a $3m-$5m Salomon van Ruysdael.
Regular readers may recognise the above St Joseph by El Greco, which is estimated at $2m-$3m; it's the picture I discussed in 2012, after it made £790k (inc. premium) in Bonhams, where it was called 'Attributed to El Greco'. I thought then that it looked 'right', and it looks even better now, cleaned. Will it matter that it's a relatively quick turnaround between the sales? It shouldn't. Someone's taken a brave punt, and it's paid off; good for them.
You can compare the pre-restoration image on the Bonhams website here. Despite the obvious ding, the picture is in fundamentally excellent condition.
Finally, Sotheby's has the below head study catalogued as by Van Dyck, estimated at $100k-$150k. It's a new discovery, and though I can only judge it from the image, I'd say the attribution is most likely correct. Indeed, I remember seeing the picture in a black and white photo once in the Witt Library, and making a mental note that it looked good - one for the 'sleeper radar'. But here it is, awake and looking shiny bright. It was previously attributed to Dobson. The condition looks excellent. The estimate is cheap.
Update - a painter writes:
When respectable art critics and auction houses attribute a ghastly painting, like this so-called Caravaggio to the man himself, I ask myself, 'did Caravaggio- for whatever reason, drugs, drink, or disease, go through a phase in his career, where he was no longer capable of imitating himself?'
Are great painters in fact capable of producing work without a single piece of correct anatomy or redeeming brush stroke?
Personally, I think not.
Perhaps they think it will 'clean up nicely...'
Pooh$ticks
December 10 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
The original E.H. Shepard drawing of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin playing 'poohsticks' sold for £314,500 at Sotheby's yesterday. That's a new record for any book illiustration at auction.
What a lovely thing.
Achtung! Fake?
December 5 2014
Picture: br.de
Here's a story I've been looking into for a while; in southern Germany, state prosecutors have begun investigating the work of an art restorer, called Christian Goller (above), after it was alleged that he has been producing 'Old Master' pictures that have subsequently been sold as the real thing. He specialises, it is alleged (put 'it is alleged' after everything you read below), in German 16th Century paintings, especially Cranach. The prosecutors are looking into 40 paintings, which have apparently been sold for hundreds of thousands of euros, some in the London art market. Apart from being an exceptionally talented creator of 'old' paintings, Goller's best trick, it is said, is not to make exact copies of known Old Masters, but to make subtle variants. That is, he'll take a known composition, but alter it slightly, with the inclusion of a new detail, or a slight variation in a limb, pose, or background.
The allegations seem to come in main part from a German art historian who specialises in Cranach, Dr Michael Hofbauer. You can look at his Cranach online database here. The story first broke in Der Spiegel magazine (subscription required), and was then picked up by the wider German press (for example here and here).
The story has yet to travel any further. But it's possible this could end up being one of the greatest fake scandals of recent times - if some of the works attributed to Goller turn out to indeed be by him. He could potentially be one of the best art forgers ever. We must wait to see how the investigation proceeds.
However, Herr Goller has form in the fake line; one of his works was sold in 1974 to the Cleveland Museum of art as a Matthias Grunewald, for $1 million. Here's a link to that picture on their website. Above is an image of it, and below is an image of the back of the panel. It's hard to believe from the features and handling that anyone could really have thought the picture was by Grunewald. But as you can see from the crack in the panel and the 'damages' and woodworm holes in the back, this was no mere 'imitation', but an extremely cunning attempt to create something that looked 16th Century.
In this piece in the New York Times from 1991, Goller says that he paints only in the 'style' of Old Masters, and sells them as legitimate copies:
"Whoever calls me a forger," Mr. Goller insists, "is lying. I only paint in the style of the Old Masters. I add patina and crackle for decoration. You can't call that a forgery." He goes on: "I think copies make art accessible. Everybody can afford to hang a Grunewald in his house." Mr. Goller emphasizes that he does not add any artist's signature to what he calls his reconstructions, and he sells them for what they are. He says he is not responsible for the claims others make for them.
Of course, 'it wasn't me guv' is a line regularly trotted out by fakers.
One of the pictures identified by Michael Hofbauer as a 'Goller' fake happened to be coming up for sale in a recent Christie's Old Master sale in Amsterdam. The portrait (below) purported to be of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and was catalogued as 'Circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder', with an estimate of €25k-€35k. When I first saw it in the catalogue, before the fake story broke, I certainly didn't for a minute think it was fake, such was the craquelure and overall quality of the picture. But in light of Hofbauer's allegation, I looked again.
A few things then struck me as potentially unusual. First, it was not a known type of Charles V, and had never been published before; odd for an apparently unique portrait of such an important figure. Despite the presence of a Habsburg double eagle in his hat, the sitter was not wearing the Golden Fleece - which again is something unthinkable in a portrait of Charles V - and the sitter certainly looked like him, with that Habsburg jaw. The only provenance was from a 'copy' of an old certificate by a German art historian who saw the picture in the Munich area in the 1950s - I've forgotten his name, and the catalogue entry has now been taken off line. It was hard to see from the images, but in some parts substantial areas of paint seemed to go over the cracks. Perhaps it was later over-paint, perhaps it was evidence of fakery. The medium was described as 'oil on panel, laid onto canvas, laid onto panel'. That's not unheard of, but one of the key ways to date a panel painting is by dendrochronology, and if you make the main surface layer impossible to date (the original panel would have been shaved too thinly to date by dendrochronology), then that's one potential hurdle overcome.
There was, AHN-ers, only one way to find out if the picture was real or fake, and that was to see it. So, for your benefit dear readers, off I dashed on a flight to Amsterdam... only to find that the picture had been withdrawn. I wasn't under any circumstances allowed to look at it. The picture is 'under investigation', and so far I've heard nothing else. So I don't know what to make of the picture. Hofbauer said confidently it was a 'Goller', but he seems (from what I was told in Amsterdam) not to have actually seen it in person. In which case, it's a bold claim by Dr Hofbauer. Christie's are, or rather were, pretty adamant it was 16th Century. All I can say is that if it is a fake, then (from the photos) it's the best I've ever seen, and better than anything I'd ever have expected to see. It would be alarmingly good.
Some of Hofbauer's alleged 'Goller' fakes seem more obviously 'wrong'. For example, this picture (above) sold at Christie's in London as 'Circle of Cranach the Elder' (that is, as 16th Century) is most odd in the face (detail below) and the modelling of the body, which looks like it has come from a 1970s tattoo catalogue, and certainly not the 16th Century. That said, the overall 'age' of the picture, in the craquelure, does look more genuine. Therefore, if it is a fake, as Hofbauer says, then it tells that someone, somewhere has pretty much perfected the art of making a new panel painting look passably ancient.
The picture made £103,250 in December 2008. Which means that as of yesterday, it's outside the 6 year window in which Christie's would need to give a refund. Caveat emptor...
Update - a reader points out the similarities parts of Cranach's 'Justice' on the left (private collection, at the Musée du Luxenbourg), and his 'Lucretia' in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, on the right. I believe the technical term for this is a 'mash up'.
Update II - a reader tells me that the 'certificate', a copy of which was provided with the Charles V, was written by a German art historian called Alfred Stange. Wikipedia tells me he was a Nazi. The provenance of the 'Charles V' was 'Southern Germany' for 'the last 40 years'.
Update III - the provenance of the 'Justice' sold at Christie's in 2008 was listed as 'Andreas Seefellner, Obernzell, Bavaria'. Michael Hofbauer, however, says (in this article) that there was no such person, and that the only person who might have been this Seefellner who lived in Bavaria never owned a Cranach.
Update IV - a reader says of the Charles V Golden Fleece question:
The collar (ie chain) worn in the “Charles V” portrait is in fact that of the Order of the Golden Fleece but without the fleece badge (ie pendant) itself. Although I’m a bit of an anorak on such things, I don’t know if the collar was ever worn without the badge, though I suspect not.
It's certainly a very odd omission - one would expect a contemporary painter to have realised that the inclusion of the Golden Fleece was essential.
Update V - another reader comments on the collar:
The Emperor Charles V while not wearing the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece is wearing the collar of the order. However, I have never seen the one without the other and since it was made of gold would not appear red!
Update VI - 16.1.26 I just noticed that the Charles V was reoffered at auction in Germany with a clean bill of health from the Gemaldegalerie in Munich. Lot 224 here.
Sleeper alert?
December 4 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
This curious picture, of Icarus and Daedalus, made £332,500 at Sotheby's day sale, against an estimate of just £8,000-£12,000. Catalogued as '18th Century follower of Van Dyck' the picture was in fact a 17th Century work, and also the original of that composition, which is known in a number of copies. The subject was a very popular one in the 17th Century. The picture was engraved in the late 18th Century as by Van Dyck. The condition was disarmingly good, which may have led some to think it was a later copy. I had a good look at the picture on Monday. But I didn't bid on it. I'm not sure who it's by, but I don't think it's Van Dyck. It's someone good though, like a Willeboirts Bosschaert type figure, or one of the many talented figures just downstream of Van Dyck. Of course, I am always prepared to be wrong...
Bargain of the week?
December 4 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
So the Old Master sales are over, and I didn't buy a sausage. To be honest, there wasn't much in the sleeper line, at least nothing in my little niche of what some have been kind enough to call expertise.
I did have a go at the above picture, however, which was a bit off piste for me, in that it was Spanish. It was catalogued as 'After Goya'. Regular readers may know that I'm not exactly a Goya fan, at least not when it comes to his skills as a portraitist.
However, the picture seemed to me to be in with a very strong chance of being by Goya. It's a copy of Velasquez's celebrated portrait of Innocent X, the prime version of which is in the Doria collection in Rome. There was, though, a replica of the head by Velasquez in the Spanish Royal Collection, which Goya would have known, not least when he made his many engraved copies of Velasquezs in the Spanish Royal Collection. That picture is now in the Wellington Collection at Apsley House, below, it having been given to the 1st Duke of Wellington.
The picture on sale at Sotheby's had previously carried a (probably 19th Century) inscription attributing the work as a copy by Goya after Velasquez (below). It had been published in almost every Goya catalogue raisonné going as a work by Goya, including by the late José Gudiol, one of the more renowned Goya scholars. It was exhibited as recently as 1989 as a Goya. But the current crop of Goya specialists evidently doubted it,as did Sotheby's.
Now I'm not saying that just because a painting used to be attributed to one artist that it must still be. Of course, scholarship moves on. But in art history, or at least the art market's view of art history, there is a curious tendency to disregard the work and attributions of an art historian as soon as they're dead. So in this case, the opinion of Gudiol and all those others who'd accepted the attribution didn't matter, but the opinion of the current, living Goya scholars did, whether they've written as much as a catalogue raisonné or not. I don't think you'd get the same in other disciplines; Einstein has been dead for decades, but E still equals MC squared.
The picture at Sotheby's was in almost pristine condition, and at first sight looked in parts as if it wasn't 'period', that is, that it was painted later than the 18th Century. But I came to the conclusion that it was period, and that it was most likely by Goya on the basis not only of some of the handling, but of the very idiosyncratic characterisation. In other words, whoever painted the portrait made the sitter look not like Velasquez's Innocent X, but Goya's Innocent X. It wasn't a copy of the Velasquez in the conventional sense - there must be hundreds of those around - but more a portrait of a portrait, if that makes sense.
Often, portrait artists develop a way of 'drawing' faces which they use repeatedly for the basic construction of their sitte's heads, and it is sometimes very easy to identify; at one extreme, it's the reason why some say all of Lely's sitters look the same. For an idea of what I mean in relation to Goya, see Goya's early self portrait from the 1770s, the same period the Sotheby's picture used to be dated to, which seems to me to have a similar characterisation to the portrait at Sotheby's:
Anyway, I can't easily understand how any other artist would set out to make a copy of a Velazquez, but intentionally make it look like a Goya, and very convincingly, unless the picture at Sotheby's was a modern fake, which it wasn't. The Sotheby's catalogue implied that the picture was a copy after Goya's own, lost copy of the Velasquez. But in my view it was too spirited and animated to be the work of an imitator of Goya copying Goya's own copy after Velasquez.
Goya is known to have made a number of copies in oil after Velasquez, but the others are lost, so we don't have anything directly comparable to look at. All I could deduce in my research was that they appeared to be the same size as the Sotheby's picture. Maybe in time they'll be found, and maybe in time opinion on the Sotheby's picture will swing back to Goya again.
The picture sold for £37,500 against an estimate of £10,000-£15,000. You might ask why I didn't go further, if I was so sure it was by Goya, for a genuine Goya copy of a Velasquez should be very valuable indeed. Two Spanish greats for the price of one! But the picture represented a long term 'hold', and wasn't much of a commercial prospect in the short term. My expertise, such as it is, doesn't cover Goya at all, and I doubt anything I said could sway the opinion of Goya scholars any time soon. It's the sort of picture that will probably remain 'after Goya' for some time, no matter how unjustified that attribution is.
If you bought it, kudos, and good luck...
Update - a reader writes:
If Goya painted this copy of Velasquez's Pope Innocent X - quite a reasonable idea I think- Why did he first paint in the greyish beard and then apparently paint it out again with reddish flesh coloured paint? Did he, or whoever the copyist was want to imagine what the Pope would have looked like without a beard? If so why?
Not sure I noticed it quite like that myself.
2.5%
December 3 2014
Picture: Christie's
The total for last night's Old Master sale at Christie's was £13.9m, which is about 2.5% of the total for their most recent evening Modern & Contemporary sale. For the small change found down the back of a Koons sofa, you could have bought, amongst other things, a portrait by Van Dyck which formerly belonged to King Charles I (above, £2.8m, all prices inc. premium), a Willem van de Velde seascape (£2.2m), and a Venetian view by Canaletto (£1.3m). All good musum level stuff. But who am I kidding in even making such a comparison...
The above mentioned Van Dyck was a portrait of the musician, Hendrick Liberti. One of two known versions (the other is in Munich), I suspect it must be the first. The condition was a little problematic in parts, especially the background and some of the dark glazes in areas such as the hair and hands. Much of the drapery was covered by layers of uncleaned, older varnish. In conservation lingo, this is known as a 'porthole clean', when someone just cleans the obvious bits like the head and hands. In this case, we must be thankful that whoever did that didn't go further.
The newly discovered Van Dyck head study (which I mentioned here last month) made £494,500, which figure puts into perspective the £300,000-£500,000 estimate at which a similar Van Dyck head study (from the same series of Brussels Magistrates portraits of the early 1630s) failed to sell earlier this year (the one that was discovered on the Antiques Roadshow, illustrated here).
Personally, I preferred the modeling of the head and the characterisation of the 'Roadshow' picture. But the picture sold yesterday had the advantage of being in much better condition, and consequently appeared much better painted, full of virtuoso strokes. It was also 'fresh' to the market - in the sense that it hadn't been turned into too much of a news story. Sometimes this can damage a picture's prospects at auction, at least in the Old Master world.
Why? Because the Old Master market is, like many markets, underpinned by dealers (despite, some might say, the best efforts of the auction houses to kill off independent dealers). If a picture is presented at auction with great fanfare, and freshly cleaned, then there's little prospect of a dealer bidding on it for stock and prepared to hold it for a number of years, because there's no way they can add value. So at the time of the auction, the only people who might have bid on the 'Roadshow' picture were private collectors who were looking for a Van Dyck head study at that particular moment, and with the ready cash to pay for it within 30 days. And you can take it from me that there's not many people like that around.
Therefore - and slightly paradoxically perhaps - the picture that sold yesterday benefited from having a great deal of later over-paint still on it (such as in the background and the clothing, which was added at a later date, the concept of the 'unfinished' being a relatively new aesthetic trend). As a commercial prospect it's much more enticing to the trade, because they can buy it, take off the over-paint, and restore it to how Van Dyck left it (which will be something like the similar study in the Ashmolean museum). Obviously, there's a risk in doing this, as the picture might in fact be knackered beneath (though I doubt it). They might even have this done in time for the great art fair at Maastricht. Now, I don't know for sure that it was bought by the trade, but I can guarantee you some in the trade would have bid on it. And at auction, maximising the price is (usually) all about maximising the number of bidders.
Finally, you might ask, why was the 'Roadshow' discovery not put into the auction with all its overpaint left on? And the answer to that is quite simple; in that case, the overpaint - and dirt and old varnish - were so completely disfiguring that it wasn't actually possible to see (at least not to non-Van Dyck nerds like me) that the picture was by Van Dyck at all. So it had to be cleaned. You can see what it used to look like here. It'll sell, one day...
Anyway, this review of yesterday's sale prices has turned into an impromptu guide to how the market in newly discovered Van Dyck paintings works. Other notable sales last night included a fine portrait by Batoni which made £344k, and a portrait of a young boy by Joos van Cleve. Sotheby's has the weightier sale this time round - their Turner notwithstanding - and I expect well see a higher overall total at their sale tonight. It might even reach a full five percent of that Christie's contemporary sale.
Bargain of the week?
December 3 2014
Picture: Christie's
Here's a picture I loved at Christie's this week - a portrait of Rodin by Eugène Carrière. The two were good friends. It was estimated at £6,000-£8,000, which I thought was cheap. It was also not in the main Old Master sales, but in a seperate French decorative sale. I sensed a possible bargain... but it sold today for £68,500.
Ouch! The 'sleeper' bites back (ctd.)
November 28 2014
Picture: Lyon & Turnbull
I mentioned earlier this month the curious story of the quarter of a million pound 'sleeper' being consigned back into auction at just £2,000-£3,000. The painting, an oil on copper depiction of Hercules, was being offered at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh as 'Manner of Francesco Albani' (above), despite having beeing bought at Bonhams last year for £254,000 where it was suspected by some of being by one of the Carraccis. Yesterday, the picture sold for £25,000 inc. premium, so that's pretty much a £225,000 hit. Ouch indeed...
I've never seen anyone cut their losses and run like that before. Normally, even if you couldn't get the experts to endorse with your 'sleeper' attribution, you'd hang on in there, in the hope that somebody somewhere might agree with you. The only possible explanation, I thought, was that the picture was an out and out fake, and had been consigned to Bonhams in a 'dirty' state, and cunningly devised to relate to a known drawing attributed to Annibale Carracci in which the hand is in a different position. In other words, the buyer at Bonhams felt there was no chance of the picture being worth anything, and wanted out.
But I went to see the picture, which has since been cleaned, and (although I couldn't spend too long looking at it - you try viewing an auction with an 11 week old) I thought that it probably was period. Admittedly, it wasn't a great painting, but I wouldn't rule out that it was painted by the same hand, or at least in the studio of the same hand, as made the drawing. From what I could gather, at least one prominent specialist on the Carraccis had not been shown the painting at all.
So it's all most curious. It seems thatsomeone bought it, but was unhappy with the cleaned picture, and simply decided not to bother pursuing the attribution any more. As a paid up member of Sleeper Hunters Anonymous, I can understand the attraction of taking a punt on things like this. But I can only dream of having such deep pockets.
By the way, if the pockets were yours, and you need a little guidance in the auction field, you know who to call...
Sleeper Alert
November 28 2014
Picture: Cheffins
These 'Circle of John Constable' clouds made £32,000 against a £300-£500 estimate at a regional UK auction yesterday. More images here.
Sleeper Alert!
November 28 2014
Picture: The Saleroom
Just a tiddler this one, and one that, annoyingly, I missed by a mere half an hour (that is, the lot had passed by the time I'd seen it and logged in to bid), but nonetheless a sensitively rendered portrait of an unknown old woman by Joseph Wright of Derby, and a bargain at £750. Now, I know you're all thinking the sitter isn't exactly a beaut - but I think it's a great picture nonetheless. Sometimes, the older and craggier the sitter, the better.
The first painting to make a million quid
November 20 2014
Picture: Metropolitan Museum
This surprised me - the first painting to ever sell for more than a million pounds, in 1970, was an Old Master; Velazquez's Portrait of Juan de Pareja. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine anything other than a post-war & contemporary work breaking price records. Richard Cork, who was at the 1970 sale, relives the moment in this article for The Spectator:
The atmosphere was extraordinary. Most observers could not believe that the painting would fetch £1 million. But the bidding, in an auction room that I had never seen so packed and tense, outflew all expectations. It started at £315,000, and took just 130 seconds. After reaching £1 million, the bidding did not slacken. If anything, it strengthened, and eventually shot past £2 million. It was finally knocked down for a staggering £2,310,000, almost tripling the previous world auction record for a painting. Even the most hardened dealers sitting in the audience breathed gasps of disbelief. Then there was a spontaneous burst of applause. The auctioneer left his rostrum, the painting was hastily removed, and sheer pandemonium broke out.
Scores of people swarmed around Alec Wildenstein, the 30-year-old dealer who had bought it. He had been sitting in the second row of the auction room and was escorted out by staff. But it took about ten minutes before a way could be found through the packed hall. He was visibly flushed, and at first seemed lost for words except to say that he was ‘very happy’. Then he managed to explain that the purchase realised the dream of his great-grandfather Nathan Wildenstein, who had founded the family firm 95 years before and thought this Pareja portrait was the greatest painting he had ever seen.
Update - A reader provides this valuable information:
To be pedantic, the painting was knocked down for £2,200,000 guineas - those were the days! For more detail, Agnews, who were one of the underbidders, provided an account in a book they published on their history. And, to put ther price in context, one could have bought four of these [Van Goghs] for the same price at around the same time and probably a studio's worth of Rothkos.
It has to be said, as far as the saleroom is concerned, the work was exceptional - a undoubted masterpiece by one of the greatest artists who has ever lived, in great condition (unlined), and not on the market since the Regency period (it was owned by the Radnors).
Wildenstein's guff about his great-grandfather was just that, as he had been commissioned by the Met to buy it - against fierce competition from Washington, who still don't have a major Velasquez, and, it was said, The Louvre.
Update II - another great comment comes in:
I too attended the sale of Juan de Pareja; and when I returned to Sotheby's where I was working at the time, I asked people to guess what it had gone for. I had various offers of £250,000 and some. When I announced the figure; there was an audible sound of collective jaws dropping to the floor.
As a footnote; the final triumph was the discovery of some centimetres of painted canvas that had been folded over the right hand side, which when revealed, altered the balance of the composition to the left and to a state of perfection.
Update III - an economist writes:
Just for comparative purposes the Velasquez sold for about £ 33 million in current prices based on the UK consumer price index. probably around two thirds of its current value which would complete well with the inflated contemporary art values.
Curiously it is also 33 million dollars if one converted the original purchase price to dollars in 1970 when the pound was around $ 2.40 and applies the United States price index since 1970 but 66 million dollars if valued at British inflation rates.
Old masters at the top of the market have risen faster than consumer prices in either country but have been outpaced recently by tulip bulbs….. err… contemporary art, the prices of which have less to do with the art than collecting and competition in general spiced with some greed and lots of guff.
While another reader says in terms of buying power, the number is more like:
[...] about £60 million today. Certainly, central London property prices have risen well in excess of 30x during the last 44 years, but that's another planet.
Update IV - a reader points out that there were more expensive pictures sold before, albeit privately:
To be absolutely accurate, this was the first painting to exceed a million sterling at public auction. It does remain remarkable that not only was the million pound ceiling broken through but the two million pound mark, but the point is that works could have, and indeed did, break the million pound limit in private sales some years before.
In 1967 the National Gallery of Art in Washington paid a reported $5 million for Leonardo’s Ginevra de’Benci – equivalent at the time to around £1.8 million. More startlingly, in 1969 the Bavarian State Government – on behalf of the Munich Alte Pinakothek – paid a reported nearly £1.5 million for Hals’ full length portrait of Willem van Heythuysen. Ironically, given they are now substantial collectors, both works came from among dispersals from the collections of the Princes of Liechtenstein.
Update V - Michael Daley from ArtWatch writes:
The Velazquez was not only priciest, but politically a v. hot purchase (at a time when Harlem was very restive). Hoving had the painting, then in fabulous, scarcely ever touched, condition secretly spirited into Wildenstein’s lair until he found the best formulation for the Met’s spin on such a potentially dangerous purchase
...and while there, he had it secretly restored so that no one every again got to see it in its fabulous condition...the shenanigans were recalled here.
Guffwatch - More on those urinals
November 19 2014
Picture: FT/AFP
Because I know you can't get enough of them, AHNers, I wrote a piece for the Financial Times on those multi-million dollar urinals, and what they tell us about today's art world. You can read it here. No podcast this time, as it was for the paper's main op-ed comment section.
Isn't it incredible that the person who paid $3.5m for the urinals at Christie's wasn't dissuaded by the large warning sign hung beside them.
Update - Marion Maneker at ArtMarketMonitor says it's a shame I've 'succumbed to splenetic envy' about such an 'important and fascinating artist'. Well, he's perfectly entitled to think that of Gober, and in fact I'd certainly agree that he's fascinating, and even to some degree important. I can still, however, be baffled that Three Urinals is worth $3.52m. Probably, the $130,000 they made last time they appeared at auction in 1996 is about right. I don't know. I wish, as he I bet he does, that he could have scooped the full $3.52m windfall this time round himself. But I certainly I don't envy anything about his work or the contemporary art market. I merely question it.
Anyway, Marion also says I've engaged in 'silly conspiracy theories' about guarantees. But when Christie's catalogues openly state that in the case of guarantor purchases “remuneration may be netted against the final purchase price”, it's not a conspiracy theory to ask whether prices reported always reflect what is actually paid for a work of art. Because they don't. That's a fact, not a theory.
Update II - it's been interesting to see the reaction to my FT piece. First, those contemporarists are very touchy sometimes. It's almost like it's a cult. They assume that anyone criticising either the market or the art is criticising everything to do with contemporary art. But it may surprise them to know that I have more contemporary pictures on my walls at home than antique ones.
Secondly, it seems very few people are aware of how the guarantor system works, even amongst those familiar with the market. One reader raises the question; if, in the provenance of a work in a sale catalogue, a price is given (as often happens) for the previous time a work sold, but that refers to a guaranor purchase, is that being misleading?
