Longleat Titian makes £15m Hammer
July 2 2024
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Christie's London Old Masters Part I sale realised a total of £43,594,800* (including fees) with 83.4% of lots sold / 74.1% including withdrawn lots.
Impressively, the top two lots, the Titian and the rediscovered Quentin Metsys had third-party guarantees. So too did the Master of the Monte Oliveto Madonna and Child and the Bonington Venetian picture.
Here's my live posting of the sale, which includes the hammer prices made by the top lots:
Update - And we're off! It was announced that Lots 18 (Roelant Savery), 19 (Jan Lievens) and 27 (View of Jerusalem) have been withdrawn.
Update 2 - Lot 1 soars to £280,000 over its £100k - $150k estimate. A good start.
Update 3 - All lots have broken their top estimates thus far. Lot 3, the early Portrait of Elizabeth I, hammered down at £720,000 over its £300k - £500k estimate.
Update 4 - Lot 4, the rediscovered Quentin Metsys, hammered down at £9m over its £8m - £12m estimate in the end. Remeber, this picture sold at £254,500 in 2015 as 'Studio of'. The painting sold to a bidder in the room, it seems.
Update 5 - Lot 8, the Longleat Titian, hammered down at £15m over its estimate of £15m - £25m. Bidding opened at £12.5m, rose quickly to £15m and stayed there until the hammer was brought down with Andrew Fletcher on the phone. The total is £17,560,000 with fees.
Update 6 - The first BI (bought in picture) of the sale, Lot 13 the Van der Ast still life.
Update 7 - The Earl of Cowdray's Frans Hals hammers down at £4.7m to Andrew Fletcher on the phone over its £4m - £6m estimate. It appears that there was a bidder in the room giving 'signs' to the auctioneer (Henry Pettifer) that weren't quite understood! A very dirty picture, which will look transformed once cleaned, certainly.
Update 8 - The monumental George Stubbs horses in a landscape failed to reach its reserve and didn't find a winning bid with its £7m - £10m estimate.
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* - This total was at £51m last night, I'm not sure why it has been so dramatically reduced in the past 24 hours.
