Category: Auctions
Christie's Old Master evening sale
December 4 2012
Picture: BG
Bit of a flat one this. Christie's most recent Old Master auctions in London totalled £95m, but tonight's sale limped home at just £11.5m. December sales usually play second fiddle to the July auctions, but there's no denying that this evening's was rather weak.
I'm not entirely sure why. The quality of the pictures on offer wasn't bad, the estimates weren't crazy, and the cataloguing was the usual high standard for a Christie's evening sale. There were no knockout lots though. The top lot by value was a £2m Jordaens (inc. premium).
However, by my counting some 25 of the 54 lots failed to sell, and nothing kills the atmosphere in an auction room quicker than a run of bought in pictures. At one point there were 8 consecutive failures. The buy-ins included what we thought was a rather fine Italian-period Van Dyck, which we had been tempted to bid on [below].
Happily, the British pictures on offer performed well. A not stellar Reynolds made £211k, three head studies by Lawrence made £121k, while a fine Gainsborough copy after Van Dyck made £265k. And the second highest price of the evening was for a rare night scene by Wright of Derby, which made £914,850 [above]. This delightful picture had recently been discovered in a US auction (I'm told) for peanuts. It was an epic find by probably the greatest sleeper-hunter of our time (who is very discrete, so I can't name him).
Tomorrow evening's Sotheby's sale will most likely beat the Christie's total, especially if they sell their £10m-£15m Raphael drawing, and the £5m-£7m Jan Steen.
Update - a reader writes:
I can tell you part of the reason the sale fell flat tonight - picture flipping. At least 16 paintings had been on the market in the last 15 years, and only 5 of them sold. The market is smart enough to figure out that the Flinck sold 7 months ago at Dobiaschofsky, even if it wasn't spelled out in the catalogue, and wasn't going to pay a premium to a sleeper hunter who overpaid for a work in mediocre condition. Almost without exception, the Dutch pictures were recycled, mediocre examples of the artists' work. As something of a sleeper hunter myself, my rules are a) if it can be found, properly attributed, on Artnet, it will make a fair price the first time around regardless of where the auction is or what the estimate is, and b) even if it's not on Artnet, if you can tell during the bidding that at least two dealers are involved as well, it will make a fair price, and it's best to sit back and let it go. That leads to a pretty low success rate in bidding, but a low failure rate in reselling as well.
On offer at Sotheby's
December 4 2012
Video: Sotheby's
Sotheby's have pushed the boat out with their Old Master videos this time round. Here, George Gordon talks engagingly about highlights from tomorrow's Sotheby's Old Master sale.
Getting up close and personal with art
December 3 2012
Picture: BG
I'm afraid service might be a little slow at the moment, as we're in the thick of Old Master Week here in London. Things are pleasingly busy in the art world, and the salerooms are buzzing. I still can't work out why the art market seems to be defying the general economic gravity, but it is. This weekend we experimented with weekend opening times, and even sold a painting (a Kneller), on Saturday.
Above is a snap from Sotheby's, where they are showing Raphael's drawing of an apostle, consigned by Chatsworth at £10-£15m. If you have the time, and even if you have no intention of buying, I strongly recommend checking out the Sotheby's and Christie's Old Master viewings. It's one of the best ways to become intimate with great art, and allows an experience quite unlike that you get in any museum. Not only can you get up close and personal to the paint surface, you can also take photos, look at the backs, and generally do things (within reason) that would normally see you escorted from most art galleries by a pair of heavies. This week you can not only see the above Raphael drawing, but fine works by Batoni and Jan Steen at Sotheby's, while Christie's have a newly re-discovered Wright of Derby (below), and a good pair of Van Dycks.
Old Master Week (plug)
November 27 2012
Picture: Philip Mould & Company
To coincide with the Old Master auction viewings here in London, the Philip Mould gallery will be open on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd December between 12-5pm. Amongst the pictures we'll have on display will be this rather nice Balthasar Denner, painted in 1732, which he called ‘Eine Kaffee Schenkerinn’.
Porn alert! (ctd.)
November 26 2012
Picture: Christie's
Last week we saw how Christie's, in their Old Master Drawings catalogue, felt the need to print a large warning notice before showing two 'sexually graphic' drawings by Thomas Rowlandson. But it seems that in the modern British department, anything goes. Or at least, anything goes if you subtly title the above drawing by Duncan Grant, 'Two men Wrestling'.
Looks a bit below the belt to me...
Update - a reader writes:
When I was at Bonhams I was portering a Vertu sale with some Edwardian enamelled porno cufflinks. There were four separate 'close-ups', all very Triple X.
Of course, a client rang up wanting someone to describe what was happening in each one. 'Wrestling' wouldn't do, and I was in the middle of a public view saying things like 'double penetration' down the phone.
That's enough filth for now, I think.
Things they wish they never said (ctd.)
November 22 2012
Picture: Forbes
Last week saw both Christie's and Sotheby's set big records for their modern and contemporary art sales. But the day before the sale, Forbes ran a piece on why the sales wouldn't do very well:
“The art market is a lot weaker,” explained Thomas Galbraith, head of analytics at artnet, who expects another lackluster week. The problem is that the market is, as one commentator put it, “allergic” of second-tier works. “People are taking less risk and going for works that are proven,” noted Galbraith, “the market is taking a step back, it’s a self-aware market.”
Oops. Meanwhile, on Reuters Felix Salmon has an interesting piece on the stirrings of a revolt in the contemporary art world:
The doyenne of art-market reporters, Sarah Thornton, has quit writing about the economics of art. She says there are a hundred reasons for doing so, including the fact that “tightknit cabals of dealers and speculative collectors count on the fact that you will report record prices without being able to reveal the collusion behind how they were achieved”, and that “it implies that money is the most important thing about art.”
Charlie Finch, too, smells the irrelevance of a world which has become irredeemably decadent in all the worst meanings of the word — to the point, this summer, at which he convinced himself that even the plutocrats would notice, and that the art market would be crashing hard, right about now. Obviously, that didn’t happen: it’s almost impossible to underestimate the obliviousness of the art-collecting elite, who are of course constantly surrounded by precisely the kind of courtiers — consultants, gallerists, even artists — who constantly tell them how perspicacious and important they are. Look no further than former commodity broker Jeff Koons, whose Tulips just sold for $33,682,500 at Christie’s: the last time I saw him he was in Davos, palling around with a Ukrainian oligarch, and generally solidifying his reputation among the people who really matter. Insofar, of course, that the people who really matter are the people you want to continue to funnel millions of dollars in your direction.
No, Charlie, the art market oligopoly system isn’t going anywhere: if anything, it’s more entrenched than ever. But the people without millions of dollars, the people who try to talk about art but find all conversations ultimately being about money — those people are, finally, getting fed up.
Like it or not, art and money have always gone together, and always will.
Porn alert!
November 22 2012
Picture: BG
Tickled to see the above porn warning in Christie's forthcoming Old Master drawing sale. How hardcore do you think the pictures might be?
Find out by clicking 'Read On'.
Does this cabbage turn you on? (ctd.)
November 19 2012
Picture: Christie's
Following our naughty cabbage story (below), a reader writes:
Couldn't agree more on being rather suspect of reading overly sexual meanings in pictures such as the Dou you posted this week. However, I think from time to time my fellow countrymen painters did like to include a dubious prop or two, such as Abraham van den Tempel in this picture sold at Christie's Amsterdam this week [above]. The calabash in question could hardly be over-interpreted, in my view...
Phwoar.
National Trust picks up a bargain
November 16 2012
Picture: Christie's
Good to see that the National Trust is not averse to a spot bargain hunting. Curators at Dunham Massey will soon be receiving the above portrait of George Booth, 1st Lord Delamer, bought at Christie's in New York for just $2,125. In their Arts Bulletin, the Trust reveals that it found some extra provenance linking the picture to the house. But despite their purchase, the Trust seem cautious about firmly identifying the sitter, although it's a dead ringer for their other portrait of Delamer, attributed to Lely.
Boom (ctd.)
November 15 2012
Video: Christie's
Alas, Sotheby's excitement at their highest auction total ever ($375m) was short-lived. Last night Christie's New York contemporary art sale fetched a record total of $412.2m. The top lot was, inevitably, a Warhol, the Statue of Liberty silkscreen featured in the video above. Another Warhol, of Marlon Brando, made $23.7m. The fact that it last sold in 2003 for $5m gives you an idea of how crazy the art world is.
Carol Vogel in the New York Times says Christie's knew they were in for a big night, because:
...in addition to a great deal of interest in the sale from collectors around the world, Brett Gorvy, chairman of Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department worldwide, said there had been a record number of requests for sky boxes — those invitation-only spaces secreted a floor above the salesroom, where the superrich can watch and bid without being seen.
Yuk.
How do you sell a £10m Raphael (ctd.)
November 15 2012
Video: Sotheby's
It's interesting to see that Sotheby's have toned down the hyperbole in their video for Raphael's drawing Head of an Apostle, which is being offered for sale in London next month at £10m-£15m. In the 'trailer' for the above film, we previously had Sotheby's head of contemporary art, Tobias Meyer, saying:
This drawing is the complete pivotal centrepoint of art history. It opens up everything toward the future.
Now that has become a more honest:
Everything that ultimately becomes relevant for the future of art history is right in this drawing.
But in a sign that Sotheby's are still hoping to lure contemporary bidders towards the drawing, we get Meyer summarising it thus:
...it has the intensity of a great Warhol, or a great Bacon. The fact that it is over 500 years old is completely irrelevant.
You and I might disagree about that. But what is incontrovertibly (and to me mind-bogglingly) true is that compared to a 'great Warhol', this undeniably great Raphael is cheap.
Also worth a watch is Sotheby's video on two important Burgundian manuscripts being sold by the Duke of Devonshire in December. It's notably free of guff, and much the better for it. Somebody should give Sotheby's manuscript specialist Dr Timothy Bolton his own TV show - he's brilliant.
Update - a reader writes, naughtily:
I think the real star of that Sotheby's video is Tobias Meyer's hairdo.
Boom
November 14 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
Sotheby's have brought out the bunting to celebrate their highest ever auction total at last night's contemporary art sale in New York. Aided by a $75m Mark Rothko (above), the sale took in $375m (inc. premiums). Full details here.
Tut tut
November 14 2012
Picture: Bonhams
In just over two weeks time, Bonhams Old Master sale will go on view at Bond Street. But their catalogue is still not online.
Update - now it is! This means I can stop pressing refresh every hour... It's good to see that Bonhams has resolved its zoom image issues - now they're excellent. Sotheby's have got much better too.
How to prepare for an Old Master sale
November 9 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
The process of finding, researching, cataloguing, valuing, and selling the hundreds of Old Masters needed to make up an auction is a daunting and stressful challenge. I couldn't begin to do it. On the Sotheby's website, Old Master specialist Andrew Fletcher (above) has an interesting piece on how he and his colleagues go about preparing for a sale:
At this time of year, with hundreds of pictures arriving from around the world in time for inclusion in our December auction, all the senior specialists and cataloguers in the Old Master department regularly gather deep in the basement beneath New Bond Street to inspect each and every one of them, analysing both attribution and value.
This is the moment when your heart-rate increases exponentially. The picture you agreed for sale the prior month while on a lonesome trip to some far flung corner of Europe makes its way to the easel, to be minutely scrutinized by a dozen colleagues, and can be greeted with either delight or derision. Happily, instances of the latter are rather rarer than those of the former.
More here.
Meanwhile, in New York...
November 9 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
Last night the above Picasso sold at Sotheby's New York for $41.5m (inc. buyer's premium), coming in at the lower end of the estimate of $35m-$50m (which does not include premium). The picture had been guaranteed, and had sold for $28.6m in 2000 at Christie's New York. The increase in the 12 years since is not perhaps as big as you might expect.
Despite Christie's sale on Wednesday of a Monet water lillies for $43.8m, the New York Impressionist and Modern Art sales this week have been a mixed bag, as Carol Vogel in the New York Times reports:
It has been a tough week for Sotheby’s and its archrival, Christie’s. Both auction houses had padded their sales with mediocre material, and buyers knew it. On both nights, second-tier examples of artists including Cézanne, Matisse, Monet and Picasso went unsold. Christie’s auction on Wednesday night had been a struggle, but in the end it had more high-priced works and its total, $204.8 million, was higher than Sotheby’s, which brought $163 million on Thursday. Both were below their estimates.
The varying prices tell Jonathan Jones, in The Guardian, that there is evil everywhere in the art market:
Is it all teetering on the edge of apocalypse? Is the boom in art prices that has defied a wider economic stagnation about to end? If so, it would be bad for no one except a few "rich bastards" (to quote the artist Mark Rothko on the people he had no wish to paint for). A fall in art prices would be good for museums, good for public collections and good for the mental health of our culture.
At least we know now whom art collectors vote for. One reason for the flat sale at Christie's, it has been suggested, is that buyers were depressed by the re-election of Barack Obama. The art market, it seems, may be the Republican party at play, to add to its other charms.
Readers will know that this little corner of the art market, at least, was relieved at Obama's re-election. Which feelings, incidentally, drew this response from a reader in America:
Several of the people who would consider shopping in your gallery would not appreciate your political comments about Obama. Your clients, I am sure, are in another category and would find it difficult to read your comments in your blog. The American political situation is terribly complicated and very sensitive at the moment. I would stay away from it--by miles.
To which, as we say in England, bollocks.
Treat of the week
November 9 2012
Picture: Christie's
The December Old Master sale catalogues have gone up; Christie's here, and Sotheby's here. It seems to me that, Sotheby's Raphael drawing notwithstanding, Christie's have the better sale.
There are plenty of nice things on offer. A particular treat is the above copy of a Van Dyck by Gainsborough (lot 44) - for an 18th Century picture, what better confluence of artists could there be?
Looted Kandinsky to be auction
November 2 2012
Picture: Bloomberg
Over on Bloomberg, Catherine Hickley reports that a Kandinsky worth up to $2.4m which was looted by the Nazis is to be sold at Christie's on 7th Nov, after a settlement was agreed with the heirs of German art historian Sophie Lissitzky- Kueppers.
The painting had previously been offered for sale in Cologne at the auction house Lempertz, who disputed the heirs' claim (and who under the Nazis held a number of so-called 'Judenauktions'), but it failed to sell.
More details here.
How do you sell a £10m Raphael drawing?
October 31 2012
Video: Sotheby's
If you're Sotheby's, with a touch of Hollywood, and lashings of hyperbole. In this cleverly shot 'trailer', Sotheby's have gone all moody, with string music and tilt shift focussing to give a tempting glimpse of the Raphael Head of an Apostle on offer in their December Old Master sale (with an estimate of £10m-£15m). They have also drafted in their 'voice' of art, Tobias Meyer, which suggests, given that he is usually to be found selling modern and contemporary art, that Sotheby's are hoping to look beyond the circle of Old Master buyers for the drawing.
I'm all for presenting Old Masters in a trendy new light. But check out the guff here - Meyer says, presumably without blushing:
This drawing is the complete pivotal centrepoint of art history. It opens up everything toward the future.
Now it's a fine drawing, and will no doubt exceed its estimate. But if an art history undergraduate said that a drawing (or more specifically, an 'auxilary cartoon') for an unnamed apostle by Raphael was 'the complete pivotal centrepoint of art history', that is, a work so important that every other work of art before or since revolved around it, their tutor would not only choke on his or her biscuit, but stab the paper violently with a red pen.
Must try harder...
Van Dyck watch
October 30 2012
Picture: BG
Spotted in the new Burlington Magazine, coming up at Christie's in London this December, a fine Italian period work, probably unfinished. The estimate is £700,000-£1,000,000. I bet it makes more...
Sleeper of the week?
October 24 2012
Picture: Brussels Auctions
A reader alerts me to a high price made for the above 'Ecole Italienne' view of the Vatican, which made EUR215,000 (hammer) against a EUR2-3,000 estimate. Regular readers will remember the Gaspar van Wittel potential sleeper which fetched a whopping £718,850 at Sotheby's last year. Has Wittel struck again?
Of course, I completely missed both of them...
