Category: Auctions
Velasquez cleaned
February 27 2013
Picture: Otto Naumann Ltd
The recently discovered Velasquez sold at auction at Bonhams in 2011 for £2.6m has been cleaned, in time for display at TEFAF Maastricht (which opens on 14th March). You can zoom in on the cleaned picture here.
Christie's Online
February 25 2013
Pic: Christies
By LH
Tomorrow Christies will open bidding for the second batch of works from the Warhol Foundation after their decision to sell the lot last year. Intriguingly Christies have decided to offer them in an online auction over the course of one week;
"The timed online format allows clients to browse, bid, receive instant updates by email or phone if another bid exceeds theirs, organize shipping, and pay from anywhere in the world."
This eBay style of auctioneering seems to be all the rage at the moment and a few regional auction houses have also opted for this method of sale, normally for their lesser valued items such as wine as well as unsold lots. With the ever increasing overheads of large commercial spaces, this quicker method of public offering will no doubt become common ground in the years to come.
Sotheby's sued over Caravaggio attribution
February 15 2013
The Art Newspaper reports that Sotheby's is being sued over a work it sold as a copy of a Caravaggio in 2006, but which might in fact be the real thing. The vendor is apparently claiming up to £10m. The word 'might', of course, is the crucial bit here, for although the late Sir Denis Mahon said the picture was by Caravaggio, other Caravaggio scholars have said it isn't. And Sir Denis might have had a conflict of interest - he bought the picture at Sotheby's, for £50,400.
From TAN:
The claimant is Lancelot William Thwaytes, who consigned the work to auction in 2006; it was catalogued as The Cardsharps, “a 17th-century copy after Caravaggio’s original now in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth”. The painting had been in the Thwaytes family since 1962. According to the claim that was filed at the end of January, Thwaytes seeks unspecified damages, interest and costs relating to the price difference between the £42,000 the painting sold for in 2006 and “what its true open market value was in 2006”, had it been attributed to Caravaggio and to be determined by expert evidence. The filing includes the claim that Sotheby’s did not undertake the necessary research and analysis prior to the work’s sale.
In a statement, Sotheby’s says that its “view that the painting is a copy and not an autograph work by Caravaggio is supported by the eminent Caravaggio scholar Professor Richard Spear, as well as by several other leading experts in the field”. Other experts who have gone on the record in support of Sotheby’s view include Helen Langdon, the Italian Baroque scholar and the writer of Caravaggio’s 1998 biography, and Sebastian Schütze, a professor of art history at the University of Vienna. In reference to Mahon’s The Cardsharps, Schütze writes in his 2009 catalogue of Caravaggio’s paintings that “the quality of the execution… rather suggests the painting to be a copy”.
So far, Sotheby's case would seem pretty strong, not least because it's very hard to sue an auction house if they make a mistake over attributions. The Terms and Conditions you sign when consigning a painting for sale effectively give them carte blanche to call a picture what they like. The only thing you can sue auction houses for is negligence - that is, say they didn't bother to do even the most basic research on a painting - and that is very hard to proove. In my experience, at least, the major auction houses usually are professional and diligent in how they catalogue pictures.
However, then Sotheby's go and spoil their case by saying:
Sotheby’s adds: “Our view is also supported by the market, which gave its verdict on this painting when it set the price at £50,400 [the hammer price plus the buyer’s premium] at Sotheby’s sale in December of 2006. The catalogue in which the painting was included was distributed among the world’s leading curators, art historians, collectors and dealers—had they deemed the attribution different to that given in the catalogue, the price realised would doubtless have reflected that.”
This is a spurious argument, and I can't believe that anybody senior at Sotheby's has signed off on it. Such logic would rule out any cheaply bought 'sleeper' ever being right. And, if the inverse is true, it must mean that when 'the market' bids way over estimate for a picture called, say, 'follower of Rubens', then not only is the market right that it is by Rubens, but the auction house must wrong in stating that it is by a follower.
The 'Caravaggio' in question here was offered at Sotheby's minor saleroom in Olympia, which is now closed. It was a pain in the bum to get to, and only the hardy and determined tended to go and view paintings there. So it would have been quite easy for the 'the world's leading curators, art historians, collectors and dealers' to miss the painting. It used to happen a lot, but sadly, for bottom-feeding dealers like me, doesn't so much these days; high-resolution online images mean most people can inspect pretty much everything on offer at auction, no matter where it is. But in the distant days of 2006 online images weren't as good as they are now, and the Sotheby's Olympia catalogues generally only had very small printed images. You can see the original catalogue entry here. So it's just not possible to use an auction sale price as proof of a painting's attribution. For what it's worth, I remember looking at the picture - and not having a clue that it might be by Caravaggio. The attribution is now also supported by, according to TAN:
[...] Caravaggio scholars Mina Gregori and Maurizio Marini; Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums; the curator and Bolognese art expert Daniele Benati; Thomas Scheider, a writer and restorer; and Ulrich Birkmaier, the chief conservator of the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Update - a reader asks:
A very interesting article on the Mahon 'Caravaggio' - do we know where it currently is, does it form part of the Mahon estate, which I understood was willed to the Art Fund, and on a slightly different matter, what is the news on Mahon's will, which I believe still hasn't been published?
Another reader also wonders:
Interestingly the article actually says Mahon “obtained an export licence for it that gave an estimated selling price of £10m”.
I assume this was a temporary one for the exhibition in Trapani as I don’t recollect any case before the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art. Unless of course there was no objection to a permanent export licence by the Committee’s expert adviser, the National Gallery, which, given the rarity of authentic Caravaggios in the UK, one would expect there to be.
And what has happened to it since? I notice that the Mahon pictures in the National Gallery have not yet been accessioned, they remain “On loan from the Personal Representatives of Sir Denis Mahon”.
Update II - I am reliably informed by someone whose opinion on attributions I trust entirely, that the picture is certainly not by Caravaggio.
Boom (ctd.)?
February 7 2013
Video: Christie's
More high prices at this week's Impressionist and Modern sales in London, including £26.9m for the above Modigliani. Details at Bloomberg here.
New York Old Master week
February 2 2013
Picture: Sotheby's
Christie's seem to have had the more successful week of Old Master sales in New York, though I preferred Sotheby's offering myself. I flew out with my boss, Philip Mould, on Saturday and left on Sunday evening, which gave us enough time for a close view of the sales, and refresher trips around New York's incomparable Met and Frick collections. We've ended the week with three new acquisitions, two of which will prove to be, we hope, new discoveries - more details here soon.
Christie's seperate Renaissance sale did well, making a total of $42.6m (all prices with premium). Highlights included a Fra Bartolommeo Madonna and Child (in its original frame) at $12.9m; a Botticelli Madonna and Child at $10.4m; a Portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni in incredible condition by Il Gaetano at $7.58m (a record for Gaetano, or Scipio Pulzone); and even a somewhat compromised Raphael drawing of Saint Benedict Receiving Maurus & Placidus making $1.2m. In their main sale, Christie's total of $88.4m with premium was just above its pre-sale estimate of $75m-$115m (excl. premium). However, their Bronzino Portrait of a Young Man with a Book at $12m-$18m failed to sell. Possibly this video didn't help. Other sales of note for Christie's included a Watteau at $602,500; and a fine Chardin making a record $4m. Van Dyck fans like me will have noted the 'Portrait of a Cavalier' making $542,500. A rare oil on panel portrait, it had been excluded from the recent 2004 Van Dyck catalogue raisonne. But I thought there was little doubt about the attribution, and one could even argue, given the way colours fade less on panel, that more of Van Dyck's portraits looked as colourful as this once upon a time. Another record at Christie's was this delightful drawing by Claude, which made $6.1m against a $500k-$800k estimate. In all, Christie's totalled $88.4m, which was its best New York Old Master total since 2006 - so congratulations to them.
For Sotheby's, things were a little patchy. Their total was just over $80m including premium, not far off Christie's, but some way below the lower estimate total of $89m (which does not include premium). Their highlights included Fragonard's Goddess Aurora Triumphing Over Night, which was sold to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for $3.8m; a newly discovered Christ Blessing by Hans Memling at $4.1m; a delightful Turner watercolour Heidelburg with a Rainbow at $4.5m; and Pompeo Batoni's amazingly fresh Susanna and the Elders [above], which made $11.4m against an estimate of $6m-$9m. The last price was interesting given that the picture failed to sell at £3m-£5m when last offered in London in 1991. Sotheby's did however have more than a few buy-ins, including a Goya estimated at $6m-$8m.
Overall the week was, I think, a reasonably healthy indicator of the Old Master market given the general economic backdrop. As ever, there were some record prices and many over-estimated turkeys. But I cannot see how Souren Melikian, writing in the New York Times, concludes that:
Slowly, the signs are multiplying that the auction market for Old Master paintings as a financially viable system might be drawing to a close.
In five to 10 years, there probably won’t be enough top- to middle-range pictures left to keep the two international auction houses’ engines running.
People have been saying this kind of thing for years.
Update: The Grumpy Art Historian has a review of the Old Master drawings sales here.
A sleeper awakes...?
February 2 2013
Picture: Sotheby's
For me, the highlight of the New York Old Master sales was the above small oil on panel described as 'Follower of Rubens' at Sotheby's, with an estimate of $30,000-$50,000. The sitter was identified as 'Possibly Clara Serena Rubens', the artist's daughter, and was being deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum. After a protracted bidding battle between what seemed to be at least half a dozen bidders, the picture sold for $626,500.
The picture shone out from the wall at the viewing, and I'm not surprised that more than one person had the same idea as me - that this was by no mere follower of Rubens. What could have appeared at first glance to be a poorly drawn face was in fact a wonderfully observed informal portrait of a seemingly self-conscious but relaxed young girl. The shadowing and reflected light on the right hand side of the face and neck, for example, were masterly. The key here was the informality of the picture, which, in its sketchy application (especially in the drapery) set it apart from Rubens' better known and more finished head studies. The fact that it was partly obscured by several layers of old varnish, particularly in the hair and background, also made the quality of the work hard to read at first. But enough people were convinced to take it to a higher level, and I'm not surprised it made a high price.
You might say, however, that if it was so apparently by Rubens, why did it not fetch more? The answer lies in the - how shall I put this? - unsettled nature of Rubens scholarship at the moment. The Rubenianum is a fine and glorious body, but it is known for its multi-headed approach to its cataloguing - that is, it is unlike the Rembrandt Research Project, where a single figure of tested connoisseurial ability, Ernst van der Wetering, is the ultimate arbiter of attributions. As a result, a number of surprising attributional calls are made on Rubens as scholars with varying thresholds of what is and isn't a Rubens publish works on seperate areas of the artist's work. Therefore, the picture at Sotheby's will be a difficult one to 'get through', as we say in the trade, and thus carries a greater commercial risk. Plus, there is the fact that this picture was deaccessioned by the Met - as big an institution as they come - as a copy of a lost original, presumably with the agreement of the current crop of Rubens scholars, and with the views of important names such as Julius Held, who in 1959 first questioned the previously accepted attribution to Rubens, behind it. So the buyer of the picture is necessarily going to put a lot of noses out of joint if he or she does prove that it is by Rubens - almost as many as me for writing this post, in fact.
Still, it's all good fun, and art history will be the ultimate winner for the picture getting greater attention. I don't think, by the way, that Sotheby's were wrong to put the picture in as by a follower of Rubens. First, I and the other bidders may well be wrong (though I don't mind saying here that I think it certainly is by Rubens). Second, if the Metropolitan Museum and five decades of Rubens scholarship have said it is not by Rubens, then it's hardly up to Sotheby's to tell the Met where it might be going wrong. The picture will be an interesting one to follow, and gives a timely reminder here in the UK on (as I have highlighted many times) the perils of deaccessioning.
Really?
January 31 2013
Picture: Mail/Newsteam/Mullock's Auctioneers
There's been lots of excitement in the UK press about a 'newly discovered' portrait of Goering. From the Mail:
A never-before-seen portrait of Nazi leader Hermann Goering painted by a Jewish artist during the 1930s is set to go under the hammer.
The oil painting by Imre Goth enraged the tyrant after it was completed, as he was furious that it depicted him as the morphine-fuelled drug addict he was.
Goering was so outraged by the artwork that Goth feared for his life, and was forced to flee Germany and seek refuge in Britain. The portrait never left the possession of its creator, and on his death 30 years ago he asked a friend to destroy it. But the confidante kept the unique work, and it is expected to sell for thousands of pounds when it goes up for auction next month.
I'm no Imre Goth expert, but from what I've seen of his work he was a much better artist than this. There's something rather disingenuous about the picture on offer here - its surface, colouring, and drawing all look most odd. Caveat emptor, as they say...
And in any case, why would you want to sell, much less buy, a portrait of such an odious figure. Check out this peculiar argument for buying the portrait from the auctioneer:
The portrait forms part of a war memorabilia sale to be held by Mullock’s auctioneers in Ludlow, Shropshire on February 14. Its reserve price is £8,000, but it has previously been valued by experts as high as £50,000.
'The historical significance of this portrait cannot be denied,' said Richard Westwood-Brookes of Mullock's.
'As opposed to the official Nazi portraits of Goering, this shows him exactly what he was - a depraved drug addict - and for that reason I personally think it should be displayed publicly to show successive generations exactly what the Nazis really were, as opposed to their now more familiar propaganda images.'
Update - a reader writes:
I agree who would want it. The sad reality though is that there are lots of people out there who are Nazi sympathers/fans/memorabilia collectors and all it really takes is two of them!
..If you Google nazi memoribilia there are even dealers!
Update II - another reader writes:
I too was bemused by Mullock's angle on the portrait. There's a faint sense like a bad smell in the back alleys of the auction world that shiny boots and swastikas are considered rather impressive.
Working both ends (ctd.)
January 21 2013
Picture: New York Times
The court room travails of mega dealer Larry Gagosian continue to shed interesting light on the art dealing world. Eric Konigsberg has a fascinating article in New York Magazine on the latest revelations. Of chief interest to me is the note of a conversation between AHN's favourite 'collector', Alberto Mugrabi, Sotheby's, and Gagosian, about a forthcoming auction of a work by Warhol, Hammer & Sickle, which was in danger of failing to sell, something Mugrabi and Gagosian, as holders of numerous Warhols, were keen to avoid. It highlights the inappropriate way in which many in the art world take commissions from both ends of a deal - and how, in an auction setting, it can give rise to substantial conflicts of interest:
[...] according to a word-for-word record of Mugrabi’s end of the conversation, witnessed and transcribed by an associate who was at Claridge’s, he [Mugrabi] agreed to phone Sotheby’s again to negotiate. It appears that Gagosian told Mugrabi to try to float by Sotheby’s a price of £350,000, for one particular work with an estimate of £500,000, and then call Gagosian back.
What the two dealers were apparently attempting to do was thread the needle on the two lesser Warhols. To bid high—as much as the consignor was hoping to get—might serve to prop up values for the Warhol market at large, but would be expensive and make the paintings that much more difficult to sell down the road. When Mugrabi got off the phone with Gagosian, he immediately phoned Alexander Rotter, a Sotheby’s director. “The Hammer and Sickle will be difficult,” Mugrabi said. “This painting should be much less than that, you know?” He told Rotter that “at the height of the market,” he had sold “a painting like this” for $3 million. “But it’s insane that the market has gone down and I have to pay the same price because there is some stubborn guy?”—meaning Froehlich [the vendor] —“That’s surrealist. He’s a surrealist.” When Rotter attempted to say his piece about the consignor’s attachment to the painting, Mugrabi got agitated. “Obviously, he’s putting the painting because he wants to fucking sell it, not because he wants to, you know? If he wants to sell the picture, tell him to be realistic … Which is only better for him and better for me.”
Rotter doesn’t remember the specifics of the deal, but says that “as a rule we don’t disclose the reserve to a buyer. We have conversations with the seller throughout the process. The buyer can’t say, ‘I’ll give you this’ and make it a sure thing, but we can relay that information to the consignor and say, ‘This is a good price, you might consider lowering your reserve.’ ”
Regular readers will know that I find this practice most curious. Either the auction house can be most effectively working for the buyer or the seller, but not both? How can an auction house ever think it is appropriate to tell a potential buyer what the reserve is? That is, if the auction house's prime contractual responsibility is to the vendor, how can it ever say to a buyer, 'by the way, you don't need to make you offer higher than $x'. And then how, if a reserve is set by the vendor on the advice of the auction house, can the auction house then in good faith change its advice to the vendor, on the premise that the buyer's much lower offer is suddenly 'a good price'? In such cases it seems to me that the auction house is failing in its duty to the vendor. But then since the auction house ultimately takes most of its commission from the buyer, who can blame them?
Guffwatch - Old vs New
January 21 2013
Picture: Christie's
Here's something I'm looking forward to seeing at the Old Master viewings in New York. I think there's lots of potential for a Guffwatch Special. From Christie's website:
Two major contemporary video works – Bill Viola’s The Last Angel and Eve Sussman’s The Rape of the Sabine Women – will be on view alongside the historical works featured in Old Masters Week. This dialogue between the old and the new will highlight the power of visual languages at two distinct and transformative moments in time. Visitors to the view are encouraged to experience the relationships that exist in this art historical continuum across a variety of media.
And here's more detail about one of the videos:
Bill Viola’s The Last Angel is a ten-minute meditation on spirituality. Projected lengthways on a large plasma screen, the cryptic and hypnotic imagery depicts the lazy flow of water at the top of the frame, much like clouds scudding across the sky. While we are being mesmerized by this slow-motion imagery, eventually some bubbles start to collect at the bottom of the screen. In the final moments of this looped video, a fully-clothed angel emerges, plunging upwards through the shadowy underwater realm, creating a poetic visual experience. His sudden arrival hauntingly evokes innumerable Renaissance depictions of divine visitations, visions and resurrections, with a beautiful, startling immediacy.
The auction house's increasing attempts to lure contemporary art buyers into the world of Old Masters is to be applauded. As a dealer in the latter I can't help but hope it succeeds. However, I wonder what a contemporary art buyer, used to the diet of guffy verbiage seen above, makes of the more plodding variety of art history found in an Old Master catalogue. Will they open a page on a Rubens, and be disappointed if they find no mention of 'hauntingly evoked and cryptically hypnotic depictions of startlingly immediate beauty'? One hopes not...
Click here for a reminder on how contemporary art guff is written.
Art auctions in China
December 31 2012
Video: CRI English/Dominic Swire
This film on the risks of buying art at auction in China by Dominic Swire is worth a click. Aside from some wise words from an art historian based at Peking University, there's also the views from a buyer, Zhou Benli, on what makes a great art collector:
It's really bad if a piece can't increase by 30% in value per year. If you find an artwork that goes up 100 or even 200% a year then you're a great collector. I store my paintings and don't show them to everyone because of insurance issues... It's like looking after treasure.
Here's one I missed earlier
December 21 2012
Picture: The Magazine Antiques
In The Magazine Antiques, Christopher Bryant has an excellent article on a long-lost portrait of Captain Gabriel Matruin by John Singleton Copley, recently found at an auction in the US (and alas not by me!).
Christie's wins...
December 21 2012
Picture: Christie's
...the race to get their New York Old Master sale catalogues online first. Top of BG's wish list, if he could afford it, is the above Chardin, est. $3m-$5m. Sotheby's sales are not yet online. Bonhams aren't even having an Old Master sale this time round...
'The Black Gardener'
December 19 2012
Picture: The Garden Museum
Congratulations to the Garden Museum and its director Christopher Woodward, who, with only ten days notice after seeing it in an auction catalogue, successfully raised £127,000 to buy the above 'Black Gardener' (dated to 1905) by Harold Gilman. The amount needed was more than twice the upper estimate. Our new best friends, the HLF, contributed £60,000. Well done to everyone involved. More details here.
Fakes, fakes everywhere? (ctd.)
December 13 2012
Picture: Bonhams
A reader writes, astonishingly:
With all this talk of modern art fakery (which, as you say, is so rife that I've already experienced an extraordinary amount of it during my relatively few years in the trade), I thought I'd share you my favourite personal experience. In my naive collecting days (not that long ago...) I purchased for a modest sum of around £100 a watercolour on Ebay purporting to be by the hand of Kyffin Williams - the main reason for this acquisition was the fact that I found the work had been offered as a genuine some years previous by Bonhams.
It had failed to sell but I thought the estimate was a touch high and thus I approached them to see if they'd consider re-offering the piece at a more conservative price. They confirmed it was the same work but said that they'd have to get an 'external specialist' on the artist to inspect it first hand to reconfirm the attribution. I felt this was probably a bad sign and thus was amazed when they came back and said the expert had proclaimed it to be right. Hence they re-catalogued it in one of their forthcoming sales [now withdrawn].
However, the catalogue had not been live long when I received an e-mail from Bonhams informing me that it had been brought to their attention that the work was a fake as its source had been revealed as former genuine sketch by a completely different artist, the notable but less expensive Alan Lowndes [below].
Someone had cut of Lowndes' signature, added a 'KW', some Williamsesque splodges, and crosses on the spires of a North of England pavilion to make it look like Venice!!
Quite how this fooled Bonhams, twice, and an apparent expert of the artist's work is beyond me but I guess the story acutely demonstrates much that's wrong with the murky world of modern art - and why I now almost exclusively stick to old masters/pre-1900 pictures which thankfully are infinitely more interesting both academically and aesthetically...
All most peculiar. One hopes that Bonhams have called in the Old Bill, with regards to the first consignor.
Watch the £29m Raphael sell
December 13 2012
Video: Sotheby's
Sotheby's comprehensively whipped Christie's this Old Master season, so we'll forgive them this shameful piece of corporate triumphalism.
Fresco Jesus - the revenge
December 12 2012
Picture: Ebay
Here's a weird one - a picture by the restorer of 'Fresco Jesus', Cecilia Gimenez, has reached EUR610,000 on ebay. Next bid is EUR620,000 if you fancy it. I somehow doubt the winning bidder will pay up. But you never know. Maybe Alberto Mugrabi thinks she's the next big thing.
Update - a reader writes:
I think you have misinterpreted the eBay price for this picture. The comma is the European equivalent of our decimal point, so the price is only 620 euros.
Oops. Sorry about that. Lucky I'm not a journalist.
How not to run a museum
December 10 2012
Picture: Guardian/Christie's
The failure of the British Empire Museum in Bristol is a textbook example in how not to go about running a museum. It closed, having run out of money, in 2008, but I went shortly after it opened in 2002. I don't remember much about it, except that it was empty. It seemed clear to me then that it would never be able to survive in Bristol - museums that tell a national story need to be in London.
Now, however, the museum's history has taken a farcical twist with the news that many items lent to the museum have gone missing. Most oddly of all, one of them was sold at Christie's, despite the lender having asked for it back. From The Guardian:
Almost 150 artefacts lent to a museum set up to tell the story of Britain's colonial past may be missing, it has emerged, with some of them having been sold without their owners' permission.
Trustees of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, which has now closed, are in talks with about six of the owners about compensation.
Among them is Lord Caldecote, who said he was shocked to find that a 19th-century maritime painting his family had lent to the museum had been sold at auction. [...]
An investigation by BBC's Inside Out West programme, scheduled to be broadcast on Monday, claims that 144 objects belonging to eight lenders remain missing. They include the oil painting of an East India Company ship, Dunira, by the sailor-turned-artist Thomas Buttersworth.
Caldecote told the Guardian that his late father, an engineer and industrialist, had lent the painting to the museum. After his father's death, he asked for the painting to be returned.
"I decided I would like the picture back. It turned out the museum had sold the picture through Christie's. I don't suppose we'll be able to get it back again."
Caldecote said the picture had sentimental value because an ancestor had captained the ship, part of the East India Company's fleet, and it had been a gift to him. "It was a shock when I found out the painting had gone," he said.
The painting was sold by Christie's to the government of Madeira for £61,250 in 2008. The island can be seen in the background of the picture. Neither Christie's nor the Madeirans realised that there was any issue with the ownership of the painting.
There is an ongoing dispute between the board of trustees of the museum and its former director, Gareth Griffiths, over missing artefacts. There is no suggestion that anyone has made personal profit from any sales.
The board has criticised Griffiths but he insists the care and security of the collection was the trustees' responsibility. He said: "I never benefited from any sales of material and will regard any such inference as actionable."
(Is it actionable to suggest incompetence though? Just askin'...) The story of missing items from the museum has been running for some time now, and I find it hard to believe that nobody has been held responsible. According to the Museums Journal, other things have been sold too, and Mr Griffiths was dismissed for this very reason:
The director of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (BECM), which closed its Bristol base in 2008 pending a relocation to London, has been dismissed from his post following allegations of the unauthorised disposal of objects from the collection.
Neil Cossons, chairman of the BECM board of trustees, said: “Gareth Griffiths has been dismissed as director of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum for abuse of his position as director and the unauthorised disposal of museum objects. We're not in a position to make further comment because of impending police enquiries.”
Museums Journal understands that at least two items from the Commonwealth Institute collection, which was gifted to BECM early 2003, have been disposed of including a 19th-century Maori wooden panel, which was consigned to auction last September at the Dunbar Sloane auction house in New Zealand.
A spokesman for the auction house said: “[The panel] came to us from an overseas museum, who were the vendors. They believe they have correct title to the Maori panel.”
Another item believed to have gone on the open market is a bronze casting of an 1860s plaster maquette by pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, which depicts John Robert Godley, the founder of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Interestingly, when Christie's sold Lord Caldecote's marine picture in 2008 there was no provenance listed, and no mention of the recent museum loan. The picture was listed with a special vat consideration attached to it, which often suggests it has been consigned by a company or a dealer. It would be interesting to know how thoroughly Christie's checked the picture's history. I can't quite understand why the police are not more involved in all this. Lord Caldecote's picture has effectively been stolen from him.
El Greco soars above estimate (ctd.)
December 10 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
Hot on the heels of an 'attributed to El Greco' which went way over estimate at Bonhams last week, the above 'Workshop of El Greco' made £163,250 at Sotheby's, against a £10-£15,000 estimate. The picture, a Saint Francis in Ecstasy was in reasonably good state, and signed. There was quite a lot of overpaint in the background. It had been called 'El Greco' until it was rejected in Harold Wethey's 1962 catalogue raisonne. Apparently it was also questioned by someone senior at the Prado recently.
Here at Philip Mould & Co., we thought the picture had presence, and potential to be the real thing. The signature looked damaged, but original. It seemed, on looking into the literature, that Wethey had slightly got his St Francis's in a muddle, and that the above picture could in fact be a lost original. We had a generous go at the auction, but were alas unsuccesful. El Greco is a little outside our usual area of expertise, so we weren't confident enough to go all the way, so to speak.
I look forward to seeing it again soon.
Update - a reader writes:
As an aficionado of Art History News, I enjoy the gossip but worry that you reveal too much of Philip Mould Ltd's methodology.
The clue with the Sotheby El Greco is its lack of provenance. His work wasn't of enormous monetary value at the end of the 19th century, which explains how Ignacio Zuloaga was able to acquire an El Greco painting in Paris when he was still an impoverished artist. Who the heck was María del Carmen Mendiéta? Methinks that someone has misidentified her.
Normal service resumed at Sotheby's
December 6 2012
Rubbish Picture: BG
After the desultory sale at Christie's on Tuesday, last night's £59m bonanza at Sotheby's brought a sigh of relief from the Old Master world. The headlines will of course focus on the £29.7m raised by the Chatsworth Raphael drawing. But even without that the Sotheby's total was a heartening result, with strong prices throughout the sale. A Jan Steen made £5.6m early on, and helped Sotheby's eclipse Christie's entire total of £11.5m after just 16 lots. Ouch. 13 lots out of 52 failed to sell, against 25 of 54 at Christie's. Ouch again.
One astute reader yesterday blamed the Christie's near 50% buy-in rate with a surfeit of recently sold works, including pictures flipped from one auction to another. There were none of these at Sotheby's, with almost all the lots, as far as I could discern, being relatively fresh to the market and from private sources. It was a well put together sale.
The 17 minute battle for the Raphael drawing was Old Master entertainment at its best, with Henry Wyndham (for me, the finest auctioneer in the business) deftly eliciting bids from four bidders to way past the £15m upper estimate. One bidder dropped out early, shortly after £10m, while another (whom I couldn't see, and was sat at the front) then bid against the drawings specialist Luca Bironi to about £20m (which sum drew gasps from the audience). Just when we thought it was all over, another phone bidder came in to take it up to £26.5m. The bidding had appeared to be stalling at £24.5m, but Wyndham charmed several more bids from the client at the front, as only an Old Etonian could. With premium, the price eclipsed Christie's 2009 sale of another Raphael head study, at £29.2m, and is not only a new Raphael record, but also one for any work of art on paper.
There was applause at the end - a rarity from the hard-bitten Old Master crowd. We normally leave clapping to the modern and contemporary buyers. But yesterday we showed them how to buy art in style.
El Greco soars above estimate
December 5 2012
Picture: Bonhams
The soaraway price of the week so far is the £790k (with premium) realised by the above Saint Peter catalogued as 'Attributed to El Greco' at Bonhams. The picture was estimated at £40-£60,000. I'm no El Greco expert, but even to me it looked to be so well painted that it surely must be 'right', as we say in the trade.
The picture had recently been surface-cleaned, but was consigned in a generally unrestored state. In other words, it was a perfect trade picture, which could be taken onto the next level if the attribution is firmed up, and the picture restores well. The price is a reminder to the auction houses, in this week of (so far) high unsold levels, of how much the trade underpins Old Master auctions.
