Old Master - Art Market Monitor

Marion Maneker0March 12, 2013

Newly Discovered Van Dyck Comes By Way of Museum Project

The fascinating part of the story of the discovery of a new work by Old Master Anthony van Dyck comes after the painting itself:

The oil on canvas by Van Dyck was found at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle in County Durham in northeast England. Van Dyck was born in Antwerp in 1599 and was famous for his paintings of Charles I, the king who was executed after the English Civil War in 1649.

“To find a portrait by Van Dyck is rare enough, but to find one of his ‘friendship portraits’ like this, of the wife of his best friend in England (Endymion Porter), is extraordinarily lucky,” said Bendor Grosvenor, an art historian and dealer.

The painting was in a bad state, and was listed as “a copy after Sir Anthony Van Dyck.” As such, it would probably only have made £5,000 (5,700 euros) at auction. It could now be worth £1 million.

The work came to light during photography of all 210,000 of the United Kingdom’s publicly held paintings. Yes, someone is creating a catalogue of the entire country’s painting patrimony.

Van Dyck Old Master Painting Found in England (DW.de)

General

Marion Maneker0September 04, 2012

Sotheby’s to Sell Raphael Drawing in December

Sotheby’s announces today that its December 5th Old Masters sale in London will feature three works on paper from the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth.

Executed in black chalk, Raphael’s Head of an Apostle, c.1519-20, (estimated at £10–15 million) is a highly important drawing within the artist’s oeuvre: an extremely refined study for one of the key figures in the Transfiguration, one of the greatest of all Renaissance paintings, which now hangs in the Vatican Museum in Rome. When Raphael died, his body was laid out in state in his studio, with the Transfiguration hanging at his head.

The manuscripts to be sold were made for two of the greatest libraries of the 15^th century and are flawlessly preserved, with dazzling royal and ducal provenances. The first, the Mystere de la Vengeance (estimated at £4-6 million) was acquired by the 6^th Duke of Devonshire at the celebrated Roxburghe sale of 1812, when it sold for £493.10s. – then the highest price ever paid for any illuminated manuscript. The second illuminated manuscript, estimated at £3-5 million, is an account of the fictional and swashbuckling Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East and was once among the most treasured works in the library of great Renaissance patron of the arts François I, King of France, 1515-47.

2012 Dec 5 PR Final

Artists

Marion Maneker0August 09, 2012

Canaletto to Sell in Vienna

It’s not all beach volleyball on the New Horse Guards parade ground in London. The site was captured by Canaletto and now that works is going up for sale in Vienna during Dorotheum’s October 17th sale:

The painting is an important historical record documenting 18^th century London and, arguably, the most English of the paintings Canaletto executed during his time in England from 1746 to 1755. He had many English patrons including the Duke of Richmond and on his arrival his reputation was already widespread from the works acquired by English Grand Tourists in Venice. Art historians often claim that Canaletto saw England through Venetian eyes, however, this work has an essentially English feel with its diffused atmospheric light which anticipates the works of later English artists such as Turner.

Giovanni Antonio Canal, called il Canaletto (1697-1768), painted some 40 works during his English stay, many of which remain in the aristocratic collections for which they were originally commissioned while others are in the National Gallery, London, the National Maritime Museum and the collection of HM The Queen. This work, one of only three known paintings for which Canaletto used panel support, is closely related to the celebrated painting, The Old Horse Guards from St James’s Park, 1749, in The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, and the drawing of The Old Horse Guards from St James’s Park in the British Museum. The latter shares details with this composition, especially the groups of figures in the foreground, and the beating of a carpet on the right.

In the painting coming up for auction, New Horse Guards, designed by William Kent then Chief Architect to George II, is shown in the course of construction, Old Horse Guards having been demolished in 1749-50. Canaletto depicts scaffolding around the clock tower and the south wing has still to be built, establishing the date of the painting between November 1752 and November 1753 when New Horse Guards was completed. From the left can be seen the Admiralty building with the spire of James Gibbs’ Saint Martin-in-the-Fields beyond, New Horse Guards and the Treasury, also designed by William Kent and partly concealed by the houses of Downing Street on the right. The houses in Downing Street were designed by Sir Christopher Wren and No. 10 became the official residence of the British Prime Minister and No. 11 that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1735, as they still are today.

Much published and included in the 2006 exhibition Canaletto in England. A Venetian Artist Abroad, 1746-1755 at Dulwich Picture Gallery and then Yale Center for British Art, this impressive painting is not only a great work by the master Canaletto, but also an important historical record of one of Britain’s most-visited and recognisable landmarks.

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 11, 2012

Breughel Leads the Old Master Market Higher

Colin Gleadell identifies the astonishing market in Breughel that is quietly leading the strength in the Old Master category seen in London’s sales:

Overall, the Dutch schools dominated. No fewer than seven paintings by Pieter Breugel the Younger, drawn on to the market by the high prices paid recently for his work, sold for some £13 million.

Why is this important? Besides the fact that it shows signs of a market that has been left for dead with repeated claims there were no works worth buying left in private hands, the market strength in this lower-priced, non-master works bucks the trend in other markets where only the best of the best sells at all, let alone for high prices.

Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn offered an explanation for what might be going on. There’s a disintermediation taking place in the Old Master market as collectors increasingly rely on their own judgment buying directly at auction instead of waiting for the superior knowledge of a dealer to validate the work and the price:

“It’s a whole new market from what it was 10 years ago,” the London-based adviser Hector Paterson said. “Private collectors are buying the best things at auction, making it too expensive for dealers to buy for stock.”

If you’re looking for a quick backgrounder on Breughel, you can start with Kelly Crow’s 2009 piece from the Wall Street Journal’s magazine, WSJ.

Old Masters of Vim and Vigour (Telegraph)

Auction Surprise as Sea Scene Tops Art at Sotheby’s (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 05, 2012

Sotheby’s London Old Master Eve = £32.3m

Orazio Borgianni, Christ Amongst the Doctors (£400-600k) £3.4m
Hans Baldung, Virgin as Queen of Head (£1-1.5m) £2.1m
Circle of William Scrots, Portrait of Edward VI (£500-700k) £1.77m
French School, Profile Portrait of Louis XI (£400-600k) £735,650
Charles-Joseph Natoire, Triumph of Bacchus (£300-500k) £657,250

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 04, 2012

Sea Battle Makes £5.3m

Sotheby’s is excited about the sale of a sea battle:

A dramatic composition by Willem Van de Velde – an early war artist who 350 years ago went to great lengths to capture the heat of the action - sold for £5,305,250 / €6,605,026 / $8,319,163 at Sotheby’s, leaving far behind its pre-sale estimate of £1.5-2.5m.

In this evocative rendering of the Four Day Naval Battle against the English in 1666, the artist depicts his own father sketching in a tiny galliot beneath the stern of the English ship “The Royal Prince” as it surrenders. Van de Velde and his father were 17^th -century war artists, who put themselves at the heart of the action. The subject – the defeat of the English – marked the high point of Dutch naval history and was considered so important that the precursor of the Rijksmuseum attempted to acquire the work for the nation in 1800 but was outbid. The work was bought tonight by a private Dutch collector and will return to Holland.

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 04, 2012

Sotheby’s Old Master Drawings = £6.8m

Turner, Lausanne from the West (£600-800k)£1.049m
Turner, Domleschg Valley (£300-500k0 £601,250
Turner, Sunset Over Water (£80-120k) £529,250
William Hoare of Bath, Portrait of Henry Hoare (£15-20k) £361,250
Richard Parkes Bonington, The Piazzetta, Venice (£50-70k) £175,250
Jacob van Ruisdael, Shepherd and His Flock (£40-60k) £157,250
Phillips Wouwerman, Horse Being Schooled (£20-30k) £151,250
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Bearded Oriental (£30-40k) £145,250

Auction Results

Marion Maneker1July 04, 2012

Unknown Canaletto Makes £1.9m in Sotheby’s Drawing Sale

The Old Master drawing market suddenly took off today with the £6.8m sale at Sotheby’s, including this Canaletto which made nearly £2m against a £500k estimate. Here’s Sotheby’s release:

A rare, newly-discovered drawing by Canaletto sold for a record £1,945,250
(US$ 3,050,347) at Sotheby’s London. Completely unrecorded, this exceptional work – a view of the Campo di San Giacomo di Rialto – had not been seen in public since 1876. Its appearance at auction today generated huge excitement, culminating in an intense bidding battle between six determined collectors. Together they drove the price to a sum more than five times the original estimate of £300,000-£500,00, and four times the previous record for a drawing by the artist ($715,000/ £493,103 achieved for view of Warwick Castle, from the John R. Gaines Collection, sold in New York in November 1986.)

The drawing came to Sotheby’s via an unsolicited phone call. Unsuspecting its true value, the consignors to today’s auction had kept this rare drawing preserved – unknown to scholars – for over a century in their private collection.