Category: Auctions
On connoisseurship
February 29 2012
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd. Fig.1: Attributed to John Greenhill (c. 1644-1676, 'Portrait of John Locke', c.1672-6, Graphite on vellum, 5 1/4 in. high (oval) Private collection, U.S.A.
I recently wrote an article on connoisseurship in the US-based magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur. It's been a while since the issue was out, so here, with editor Peter Trippi's permission, is the full article for any readers who may be interested.
On the Importance of Connoisseurship
When the celebrated English philosopher John Locke sat to Godfrey Kneller for his portrait in 1704, he made a special request. He asked “Sir Godfrey to write on the backside of mine, John Locke 1704 ... this is necessary to be done,” he continued, “as else the pictures of private persons are lost in two or three generations and so the picture loses of its value, it being not known whom it was made to represent.’” 1
Sadly for Locke, not everyone has followed his advice. About a year ago, Philip Mould and I found a fine portrait drawing of him (Fig. 1) in a sale at Christie’s secondary saleroom in London. It was catalogued as Portrait of a Gentleman, and, proving that Locke was right to worry about his portrait’s future value, was bought for just £386 — a fraction of its true worth. It relates to a painting by John Greenhill in the National Portrait Gallery, London (Fig. 2).
Picture: National Portrait Gallery. Fig. 2, John Greenhill (c. 1644-1676), 'Portrait of John Locke', c.1672-76, Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 in. high (oval)
"Oh no it isn't"
February 28 2012
Picture: Bonhams
The Art Newspaper has an interesting story about a Modigliani recently sold by Bonhams for £825,250. The Modigliani Institute has refused to publish the work as authentic, and will not publish it in the forthcoming catalogue raisonne by Christian Parisot. However, the picture will be published as authentic by Parisot's apparent 'rival', Marc Restellini, who is also compiling a Modigliani catalogue.
So far so confusing. But then, at the end of The Art Newspaper article is this:
Parisot inherited the moral right to authenticate the artist's work through his friendship with Modigliani's daughter.
Inheriting the right to authenticate paintings? Who came up with this madness?
'Emily Bronte' portraits make thousands
February 24 2012
Picture: J P Humbert
Yesterday a 'portrait thought to be Emily Bronte' sold at a regional auction for £4,600. Last year, the same auctioneer sold 'a portrait thought to be Emily Bronte' for over £23,000. And now, Mr Humbert says:
"We have another Bronte painting which we will put up for auction in April and we are hoping to make it three out of three."
How much?!
February 21 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
The only version of Edvard Munch's The Scream to remain in private hands (he painted four) will be sold at Sotheby's New York in May. The upper estimate is $80m. Probably it will make more, if the recent $250m sale of the last privately owned version of Cezanne's Card Players is any precedent.
Sotheby's £50.6m - Christie's £80.5m
February 16 2012
Ouch! The Sotheby's press release may say that their Post-war & Contemporary result last night 'surpassed pre-sale estimates'. But it didn't. The total raised was £50.6m, including buyer's premium. The pre-sale estimate was £35.8-£49.7m, but this does not include the premium, which starts at 25%. And however you dress it up, Christie's won the battle of the week.
'Now, lot 72, the vaguely dodgy porn...'
February 16 2012
Picture: Christie's
For a while now, Christie's has been doing a nice line in Russian porn contemporary nudes. For example, the above 'Sleeping Beauty, 2009' by Aydemir Saidov is currently on offer at South Kensington (est. £1,500-£2,000). There must be quite a market for this kind of thing, as there's usually a few sold every month. But I wonder if it's quite what James Christie had in mind, back in 1766.
Up and up and up
February 15 2012
Picture: Christie's
Christie's Postwar and Contemporary Evening sale yesterday made a total of £80.5m, the strongest since the previously over-heated days of 2008. One of the strongest sellers was Christopher Wool's 'Untitled' of 1990, above, which will forever tell the buyer he is a fool for paying just under £5m for it. The top price was, inevitably, for a Bacon, 'Portrait of Henrietta Moraes', which made £21.3m. More details of the sale here.
Meanwhile, the head of Bonhams contemporary sales has gone public with his frustration at how works are now seen simply for their investment potential:
"A lot of us were frustrated, it is always about the estimates and the deal, not the art. We wanted to talk about the works of art. It's whether the art works are important.
"When I started at Christie's many years ago clients would ask me about the work of art or the artist. In late 2007 they started asking: 'what's it going to cost me and how much will it be worth.' That's when you become a commodities broker."
Christie's edge Sotheby's in Impressionist & Modern
February 9 2012
Picture: Sotheby's/Art Daily
In the Impressionist & Modern evening sales this week in London, Sotheby's sold £78.9m, but Christie's came out on top with £97.8m. Sotheby's top price was £8.2m for a snowy landscape by Monet of 1885, L'Entree de Giverny en Hiver [being sold by Henry Wyndham above]. Sotheby's 'forgotten' Klimt did not sell in the room when estimated at £6-8m, but sold soon afterwards for £5.6m. Over at Christie's, the top seller was the £19m Henry Moore mentioned below.
Moore makes £19m
February 8 2012
Pic: Christies
By LH
Last night at Christies Henry Moore's 'Reclining Figure: Festival' made a staggering £19m. The estimate was only £3.5m-£5.5m, beating by some way their previous record for the artist.
The sculpture was created by Moore for the Festival of Britain on the invitation of the Arts Council in 1949. The catalogue says:
"The importance of Reclining Figure: Festival lies not only in the significance of the commission itself but also because it functions, as Moore recognized, as a 'key' to this period of his work. It represents the culmination of ideas Moore had developed on the theme of the reclining figure in the previous decades, whilst concomitantly inaugurating a new working method and ushering in stylistic innovations. This new working method, one which would henceforth shape Moore's approach to sculpture, involved the progression from maquette, to working model and subsequently to the large scale work; the stylistic innovations explored in Reclining Figure: Festival were a new equivalence of form and space and the introduction of raised tracery-like lines upon the surface of the sculpture."
A quick look on Artnet suggests that this quadrupled the previous auction record for Moore. The most amazing thing is that it's not even a one-off - there are another four from the same edition plus one artist proof out there somewhere...
Taylor Collection
February 8 2012
By LH
A few choice works from the collection of the late Elizabeth Taylor fetched almost £14m at auction in London last night.
All eyes were on Van Gogh's 'Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy' which soared above the £5m-£7m estimate, selling for over£10m. Not bad considering it cost her dad £92k back in 1963. Other interesting works included a self-portrait by Degas which made £713k, and a nice Pissarro for £2.9m. More details here.
The sales continue today, and if you want a piece of the action there are still some interesting works by top artists up for grabs, such as this head sketch by Augustus John of the 'Bright Young Thing' Mabel Wright.
The most useless catalogue illustration ever?
February 2 2012
Most auction houses are well-run businesses, and a pleasure to deal with. But every now and then I come across some really inept ones. Could you tell from the above photo that this lot is meant to be:
A Miniature Portrait of a Gentleman Miniature bust view portrait of a gentleman in 18th century style.
?
More curious auction cataloguing...
February 2 2012
Picture: Stephan Welz & Co.
Here's another odd piece of auction cataloguing. Above is a 19th Century painting illustrating the Brother's Grimm fairy tale, 'The Frog Prince'. It is described as:
Lot 343: English School, oil on board, 'Discussion with a Frog'.
Wonder what they're discussing...
NY Old Master results: Sotheby's $62m - Christie's $38.7m
January 27 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
Ouch. That's quite a score.
Sotheby's top lot was the above Saint Jerome in the Wilderness by Fra Bartolommeo, which made $4.9m.
I've got to write and give a lecture today on valuing Old Masters, at Sotheby's Institute - so I'll post a more detailed review of the week's sales later.
$34m Old Master sale in New York
January 26 2012
Picture: Christie's
There was another strong Old Master sale at Christie's New York yesterday, making £34m in total. The same sale last year made $28m. Top of the pile was Giambattista Tiepolo's Arrival of Henry III at the Villa Contarini, which sold for $5.9m, against an estimate of $4-6m. Next up were: a Gerrit Dou making $3.3m (est $1-2m); a Rearing Stallion by Van Dyck at $2.5m (est.$2.5-$3.5m); a delightful Rubens study for The Assumption of the Virgin at $2.4m (est. $2-3m); and Elizabeth Taylor's Frans Hals [above] at $2.1m (est. $700k-$1m).
I can 'exclusively reveal', as they say in the papers, that the Hals will be heading to the UK soon, as part of a private collection. It is a fine portrait, once dismissed by Hals scholars, and probably something of a bargain. There can be no doubt that it is fully autograph, and in nice condition too. Van Dyck's Stallion may also be a bargain, for it sold in London in 2008 for just over £3m. The catalogue note for the picture stated that Christie's had a financial stake in the picture, either owning it 'whole or in part'. The belief is that last time it was offered for sale the eventual buyer would not pay. The picture is an interesting case of how an awkward and recent market history can influence value.
All prices include buyer's premium.
$1.4m drawing purchased by the Getty
January 26 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
ArtInfo reports that this Renaissance drawing attributed to Piero del Pollaiuolo was bought yesterday at Sotheby's New York by the Getty Museum for $1.4m.
New discovery - a portrait of the young James I & VI
January 25 2012
Picture: Philip Mould
A quick note about a picture I've recently found; above is a portrait described in a minor auction house as a 'Portrait of a Young Girl'. Underneath the old varnish and dirt I found an original inscription identifying the sitter as 'Jacobus', King of Scotland, painted when aged 9. The face-type was recognisable from the well-known portrait of James aged 8 in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which is by Arnold Bronkhorst, then court artist in Edinburgh. Our portrait uses the same head type, but with a slightly more adult form of formal court dress.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about the picture is what lies beneath it. When cleaning the portrait, I noticed a third ear emerging from James' forehead. An infra-red photograph of the picture, below, revealed that it had been painted on top of another, much earlier portrait of a saint. The so far anonymous saint is holding a chalice, and his hands can be seen clasped in prayer. The integral frame is original to the earlier picture; the portrait of James was painted straight on top of the saint, and within the existing frame. The picture of the saint looks Netherlandish, perhaps early sixteenth century, and by a good artist. One can speculate as to why the picture was over-painted, but it was probably something to do with the move against religious imagery in Reformation Scotland. And since the painting of the saint was made to a piece of good quality imported oak, it would have made sense to re-use it rather than destroy it.
Elizabeth Taylor's Van Gogh...
January 17 2012
Picture: Christie's
...will be sold at Christie's in London next month, with an estimate of $7.5-$11m.
Works by this artist made $506m at auction last year. Who is he?
January 13 2012
Picture: Wikipedia
This is Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), or if you prefer, å¼ å¤§åƒ. Last year his paintings sold for more by value than any other artist in the world. Qi Bashi, whose works totaled $445.1m, finishes the year as runner up. Picasso, who has been no.1 for years, only made it to fourth place, behind Warhol. Full details at Reuters here.
Van Dycks everywhere...
January 6 2012
Picture: Elite Auction
A reader writes:
In response to your latest post, here's another slightly more interesting example [above] of exactly the same subject that I stumbled across recently!
The catalogue states:
Antique oil painting on board in gold frame depicting a man with mustache. 18th/19th century. Authenticity guaranteed. $300-400.
I'm note quite sure what they're guaranteeing here - that he has a mustache? Anyway, well spotted - it is indeed a copy of Van Dyck's self-portrait, in this case a lost original painted in the mid 1630s. Hard to say from the photos, but I would say the copy dates from the 18th Century. Someone rescue him, please! A portrait of Van Dyck is top of my wish-list, but I'm going to pass on this one, and keep my powder dry for something a little better. Happily, I get to see the real thing every day. Unhappily, I know I can never afford it...
A Van Dyck sleeper!
January 6 2012
Picture: Bentley's auctions
Well, not quite. But I can't stand to see a portrait of my favourite artist continue to be neglected as 'Portrait of a Gentleman', even if it is a much later copy. So if you want to rescue this picture, it's at least worth a little more than the £80 estimate. Sale is tomorrow.
