Category: Auctions
Second time lucky for another Bolton deaccession
January 4 2012
Picture: Bonhams
Last year, Bolton Council decided to fund the construction of a new art storage facility by selling 36 paintings from Bolton Museum's collection. The pictures included works by Millais, Romney, Burne-Jones and Sickert. They hoped to raise £500,000, but have fallen short with £395,816, according to This is Lancashire.
Regular readers will know that many of the works have sold below their lower estimate, and some have failed to sell at all. The latest casualty is Charles Napier Hemy's The Riverside, which failed at £30-£50,000 at Bonhams in September. It will now appear again in January at £20-£30,000. The whole charade (lack of transparency, consigning with only one auction house, ill-advised sales etc.) should serve as an example to other councils in how not to conduct future deaccessions.Â
Pictures that make you smile
January 4 2012
Picture: Christie's
This is by Louis-Leopold Boilly (1761-1845), a master of illusion. Coming up at Christie's New York with an estimate of $150-250,000.
A Saenredam discovery, and the power of the web
January 3 2012
Picture: BG
Here's a very satisfying discovery with which to begin the year - a rare exterior landscape by Pieter Saenredam. You may remember that I recently posted an article on the picture when it was at auction last year, catalogued as 'follower of Saenredam' at Christie's South Kensington. It was estimated at £3-5,000. It looked to me a little better than 'follower of' (I wrote that 'it shone out at the viewing') and I was hoping to bid on it myself.
Sadly, it was withdrawn (perhaps another dealer paid too much attention to it), and the picture was expunged from the online catalogue. But happily Saenredam scholar and noted art historian Gary Schwartz saw the picture here on AHN. And now he has written a fascinating entry on his own blog about the picture. His conclusion, along with that of his colleague Marten Jan Bok (co-author of Schwartz's 1989 book on Saenredam), is that there is little doubt the painting is indeed by Saenredam.
How then, if they have only seen the image on Art History News, can they be so sure about the attribution? Through excellent research. Read their analysis in full here, but the crucial facts are these:
- The scene shows the town of Assendelft, where Saenredam lived. The main building is the town hall. In front of it is the scourge post to which local villains were tied. The church is that of St Odulphus.
- The house in which Saenredam grew up can be seen in the painting, to the left of the church.
- The picture is dated 1634, when Saenredam is documented as returning to the town, and making a series of drawings that relate to the painting.
Obviously, this is not only a fantastically rare work by Saenredam, but a highly important document in relation to the artist's life. While it will always be a shame I couldn't buy it for £3,000 (tho' I suspect it would have made far more), it is wonderful that the full story behind the picture has now come to light.
The story is also an example of how the internet is driving art history forward at an unprecedented rate. Further proof of this can be found at the end of Gary Schwartz's blog post, for after reading Gary's post, a reader got in touch with news of some early provenance for the picture - dating to 1784. Sounds like the auction houses need to start their own blog...
PS - top AHN tip, if you think you've seen a sleeper at auction, don't stare at it for too long. It may get withdrawn.
PPS - curious coincidence: my post on the picture being withdrawn from CSK was made on 8th December, exactly one year after the last Saenredam sleeper sold for over a million pounds at Bonhams.
Newly found Rubens for sale at Sotheby's New York
December 23 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
Hats off to Sotheby's New York for amassing one of the most impressive line ups of Old Masters I've seen at auction for a long time. Available for you to buy on January 26th are works by Guardi, Cranach, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Tintoretto, and Fra Bartolomeo. It seems consignors are taking up the opportunities of the growing momentum behind Old Masters sales. It'll be insteresting to see how well things sell - I expect strong prices.
A highlight of the sale will be the above newly discovered study by Rubens for The Adoration of the Magi, estimated at $2-3m. It surfaced last year at Koller auction in Switzerland, where it was catalogued as 'Workshop of Rubens', and sold for CHF 140,000. There, the attribution was presumably complicated by the existence of another study of the same subject by Rubens, and some rather awkward passages. Some of these, it transpires, were the result of later over-paint, and have been removed. You can zoom in on the Koller picture and play spot the difference. Full details here.
That newly discovered Frith
December 19 2011
Picture: Christie's
Made £505,000 at auction (inc. premium).
Happy birthday Katherine of Aragon
December 16 2011
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
The happy coincidence of it being Katherine of Aragon's birthday today*, and the recent sale at Christie's of a portrait of her, allows me to continue my impromptu feast of art historical Tudoriana. The portrait above was found by Philip Mould in 2004 in a minor auction, where it was thought to be a much later copy of a miniature by Lucas Hornebolte. Last week it was sold again by a client of ours at Christie's, where it made a healthy £151,000. It's one of my favourite Tudor portraits, full of symbolism, and we borrowed it for our 'Lost Faces' exhibition in 2006.
The Christie's catalogue summarised the meaning of the picture very well:
...the marmoset is shown reaching for the cross on the Queen's breast, rather than for the proferred coin. In addition to the obvious allegory of the choice of spiritual virtues over worldly gain, the gesture has been interepreted as reflecting the circumstances of the later years of the Queen's marriage to King Henry VIII, during which the King sought various means of ending the marriage, including offering her money; her steadfastness was explained by her piety.
However, I've always though there may be an extra dimension to this picture. Why? Because the coin being rejected by the monkey is clearly an English coin, in this case a groat (as you can see if you zoom in on it). And on the other side of a groat, as you can see below, is a portrait of Henry VIII. The portrait of Katherine may therefore be seen not only as her rejection of riches in favour of faith, but of Henry himself. In which case, it is one of the most daring images of the Tudor period.
Picture: BG
Update: By the way, the groat on the left is from Henry VII's reign. You can see how Henry VIII's frequent debasing of the currency resulted in his groats, on the right, shrinking.
*with thanks to TudorTutor for alerting me to this.
Still not paid for...
December 14 2011
Picture: Bainbridge's
The buyer of the $83m vase at Bainbridge's auction still has not paid up. Scott Reyburn in Bloomberg has an interesting article on why some Chinese collectors like to bid big, but pay late (if at all). He concludes with a witty poem doing the rounds at the moment in the trade:
The Chinese bid with verve and skill,
And hence rack up a mighty bill.
“The money’s coming soon” they cry
But oh, my friend, they lie, they lie.
Record price for a medieval work of art
December 12 2011
Picture: ATG
The Antiques Trade Gazette has news of of this c.1250-80 Virgin & Child making £5.05m in Paris recently. It was bought by London-based dealer Sam Fogg.
Withdrawn
December 8 2011
Picture: BG
This rather alluring canalside scene has been withdrawn from Christie's South Kensington Old Master sale. It was called 'Follower of Saenredam' and estimated at £3-5,000. The picture, which shone out at me at the viewing when I saw it, is oil on panel, 14 x 20 inches, and signed 'Ao.1634/P.Sanredam f'. It's not my area of expertise, so I don't know if it is 'right' or not, but the signature looked genuine to me. Perhaps the astonishing price made the last time a lowly estimated Saenredam was sold caused the auction house to have last-minute doubts. Or perhaps it was the sight of the world's old master dealers queueing up to take a closer look...
Exclusive - Garrick Club buys 'Garrick' by Zoffany
December 8 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
There was great speculation last night as to who bought the pair of Zoffanys showing the actor David Garrick at play. The pair sold at the lower estimate of £6 million, making £6.8m in all. The buyer was the Garrick Club, and the pictures will hang alongside their pre-eminent collection of theatrical portraits, including numerous Zoffanys. This is splendid news for the preservation of English heritage, for there was a risk the pictures could have been sold overseas. It seemed to me that the Garrick's was the only bid in the room - so it may be that they could have let them get bought in, and secured a lower price.
Sotheby's total last night was £20m, so a little less than Christie's £24m. Quite a few lots bought in, and the room was a little subdued. But they did set a new record for a work by Jan Steen, which sold for £4.3m hammer (£4.85m with premium) below its £4.5m-£6m estimate.
Velasquez knocked down at £2.6m
December 7 2011
Picture: Bonhams
The newly discovered Velasquez at Bonhams sold for £2.6m hammer today. The estimate was £2-3m, and most observers thought that it would go way beyond that. It's strange how the market can sometimes get the jitters at the last moment.
The buyer, New York dealer Otto Naumann, is surprised with his bargain:
I was amazed... I was prepared to pay double that. It was very dirty. Maybe people were worried how it would clean. It was bought for stock. I will do what dealers do, restore it and try to get more.
Christie's £24m Old Master evening sale
December 6 2011
Picture: Christie's
There was a solid sale of Old Masters at Christie's tonight, with £24m coming in from just 36 lots. The highest price was £6.8 million (inc. premium) for Pieter Brueghel the Younger's The Battle between Carnival and Lent (above). The vendor made a handy profit, for he had bought it at auction in 2006 for £3.25 million. Brueghels, both Younger and Elder, have rocketed in the last few years, and are the closest thing the Old Master world has to currency. These universally understandable, easy to quantify images seem to be the place of choice for those looking park their cash in art in these uncertain times.
Other strong sellers included a newly discovered Govaert Flinck, which had once belonged to Catherine the Great, and which made £2.3 million (inc. premium); a £5.9 million Willem van de Velde II naval scene; and a £2.17 million Gainsborough full-length. This last picture slightly disappointed against a £2.5-£3.5 million estimate, but was a handsome price nonetheless.
There were only a few failures, including a terrifying looking Pontormo with condition issues. There were a few intakes of breath when the cover lot, a finely executed Goya portrait of Don Juan Lopez de Robredo, bought in at £4-£6m. However, nice picture tho' it was, I felt the estimate was too high for a portrait of a portly and not overly engaging sitter.
Finally, as an indication of where the money is coming from these days, the below portrait of a curious and unknown English merchant by Andrea Soldi, a good but not brilliant artist, smashed its estimate of £80-120,000 to make £825,000. Had the sitter not been wearing oriental dress - a real turn on for today's Middle Eastern buyers - the picture would have struggled to make more than £50,000...
One I missed earlier...
December 5 2011
Picture: Nationalmuseum Stockholm
The enterprising staff at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm have snapped up this fine c.1780s Nymph & Satyr Embracing by Claude Michel, called 'Clodin' (1738-1814) for just EUR 7,200. The piece was spotted in a Swedish auction earlier this year, uncatalogued, despite it being signed. Full story over on Tribune De L'Art.
Fakes, fakes everywhere
December 5 2011
Picture: NY Times - a disputed Jackson Pollock.
At last the scandal that has been waiting to hit the modern and contemporary art world is gathering momentum. Recently we've had the news of the German fakers, and now the NY times has broken news of another possible forgery ring, this time in the US:
Federal authorities are investigating whether a parade of paintings and drawings, sold for years by some of New York’s most elite art dealers as the work of Modernist masters like Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock, actually consists of expert forgeries, according to people who have been interviewed or briefed by the investigators.
Most of the works, which have sold individually for as much as $17 million, came to market though a little-known art dealer from Long Island, Glafira Rosales, who said she had what every gallery dreams of: exclusive access to a mystery collector’s cache of undiscovered work by some of the postwar world’s great talents, including Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn.
The story may be related to the sudden closure of the legendary New York gallery Knoedler last week, after 165 years in business. Knoedler has been hit with a lawsuit from client Pierre Lagrange, who alleges that a Jackson Pollock he bought from the gallery in 2007 for $17m is a fake. Tests conducted by Mr Lagrange have established that two pigments found inthe picture were not invented till after Pollock's death.
How a bunch of forgers fooled the art world
December 1 2011
Picture: The City Review
German police have released the full list of those pictures sold by the recently-jailed gang of master forgers. It seems they had been fooling people for decades. The Art Newspaper has the (unillustrated) list here. I've had a dig around and can reveal some of the images that were offered by some of the top names in the art trade.
La Ciotat by 'Emile Othon Friesz' (above) had an estimate of $1-1.5m at Christie's sale of 3rd November 2009 in New York, but didn't sell. Of this truly execrable painting, Christie's catalogue said that it was "among Friesz's most radical Fauve paintings - the artist has rendered nature in a supercharged, color-driven, ecstatically expressionist manner that goes beyond anything else that even his fauve colleagues were doing at this time." How's about that for a bit of total and utter art-world horse-shit? Excuse my language, but such drivel typifies what is wrong with the modern and contemporary art market. It's a phoney comment on a phoney picture, and typical of the hyperbolic nonsense used to justify rubbish paintings.
[More examples below]
Not laughing for much longer?
November 30 2011
Picture: Christie's Hong Kong
Artinfo reports a weak sale of Chinese contemporary art at Christie's Hong Kong, and says it is a sign of the 'cooling' market:
...no one in the room at the evening sale of Asian modern and contemporary art on Saturday night could help but notice the anaemic level of support for Chinese contemporary art. And given the role of this sector in boosting Hong Kong as a venue for contemporary art sales, this must be cause for concern to the major auction houses and dealers. "Faces of New China," the single-owner sale, was meant to be the high point of the evening auction, but six of the 14 lots were bought in and another four sold below their low estimate. The quality of the works on offer was not in question: among the pieces passed in were strong works by Liu Ye and Zhang Xiaogang, who up until now have been two of the most consistently supported of Chinese contemporary artists both internationally and in China.
A cooling market, or an understandable pause in the stratospheric rise in Chinese contemporary? Who knows, but the recent stories of fakes appearing everywhere can't be helping things.
Artinfo bolsters its theory of a sagging far eastern art market with news that a prominent work by Jeff Koons also failed to sell recently at auction in South Korea. Every cloud...
Another British masterpiece ends up at the Getty
November 29 2011
Picture: Getty
This time not as a purchase, but as a loan. George Stubbs' Brood Mares and Foals sold at Sotheby's in 2010 for £10.1m. More details of the loan over at the Getty's blog.
Miniature madness
November 29 2011
Picture: Christie's
This delicious miniature sold for £181,250 today, smashing its estimate of £15,000-£25,000. It is by Isaac Oliver, and shows Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's great patron (and, say the conspiracists, lover). It is one of the nicest miniatures to come of the market in recent years, and all the better, I think, for being unfinished.
Also fetching a high price in the same sale was an enamel by Henry Bone, which set a new record for a work by the artist. The miniature was a copy of Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII. It beat its estimate of £50-70,000 to make £313,250.
Behold, the world's most expensive snuff bottle
November 29 2011
Picture: Bonhams
This tiny (8cm high) early 18th Century snuff bottle sold yesterday in HOng Kong for HK$25.3m, or EUR2.5m. Its value lay in it being from the Imperial factory. More images here.
Small figures...
November 28 2011
Pic: Lowry's painting of Picadilly Circus matches the £5.6m record for the artist. (Christies).
An interesting article in the Telegraph reveals the undying fascination with works by Lowry, and how despite the fairly large supply of them, they are consistent performers in the auction rooms.
Out of the 485 lots offered between the leading auction houses during the recent 20th Century British Art sales, only 33 were by Lowry, yet despite this, they contributed to half of the total £40m sale turnover. There are even rumours circulating that Tate Britain might be staging a long overdue exhibition of his work...
Click here for the story.
