De Vries sculpture withdrawn from Christie's sale
July 8 2011
Picture: Christie's
Bit of a scandal at Christie's this week over the auction of a £5-8m sculpture by Adrian de Vries. The statue, A Bronze Mythological Figure Supporting the Globe, came from an Austrian private collection, and was to be the centrepiece of 'The Exceptional Sale' yesterday. But it was withdrawn at the last moment.
There appear to have been serious errors with the export procedures from Austria, and at the last moment Austrian cultural officials demanded the sculpture's repatriation.
The only stories about the saga so far are in German, so I don't want to risk getting any details wrong (or be sued). But it doesn't look good at the moment for the auction house. Der Standard describes it as 'a bitter defeat' ('Eine bittere Niederlage fur das Expertenteam'.
The sculpture has disappeared from the Christie's online catalogue, but you can see it on Google's cached page here. More as I get it...
Sleeper alert?
July 8 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
This picture sold yesterday for £718,850 (inc. premium), against an estimate of just £15-20,000. It was catalogued as 'Studio of Gaspar van Wittel (called Vanvitelli)', but evidently two or more people thought it was better than that...
The record for a van Wittel/Vanvitelli is £2m in 2003. A similar scene to the picture sold yesterday made £827k in 1995 at Christie's New York (image below).
Sotheby's set new record for Guardi
July 7 2011
As I hinted yesterday, the Guardi sold strongly at Sotheby's, selling for £26.7m (including premium). It tops Christie's Stubbs as the highest selling lot of the London Old Masters week.
I was way out on the Portrait of a Carmelite Monk, which sold at the lower estimate of £600,000 (making £713k all in). I thought it would do far better. It seems the picture suffered from over-speculation. The latest theory doing the rounds was that it was by Jacob Jordaens, which is a bonkers idea. The buyer, I think, has a bargain...
There were some perhaps suprising failures, such as this Santi di Tito portrait (est.£150-200k), and the Cranach the Elder portrait of Martin Luther (est.£150-200k). The latter had been shown in the catalogue 'stripped down', showing large losses in the background. Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea... Also buying-in was an early self-portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence (est.£80-120k). It had recently been included in the National Portrait Gallery's Lawrence exhibition.
It has been a patchy week at the sales. At the Christie's day sale yesterday the buy-in rate was almost 50%.
Losing your shirt on Lely
July 7 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
Well, that's a million quid down the toilet. Lely's full-length portrait of Nell Gwyn (above) failed to sell last night at Sotheby's, where it had an estimate of £600-800,000. It had previously sold for over £1.5m in 2007 at Christie's, where it had solicited just one offer.
The picture is perhaps a salutary lesson in buying at auction. Auction estimates do not necessarily reflect an item's value. Some auction houses like to place high estimates on a picture with the express intention of selling it only to a single bidder at the lower estimate. But if you ever find yourself the only bidder on a picture, be very careful...
Bargain of the week?
July 6 2011
Picture: Bonhams
This large and impressive Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist was on offer at Bonhams today. Catalogued as 'Workshop of del Sarto', I thought it had areas of quality underneath the obvious dirt and old varnish. Since there's a history of 'Workshop' productions being found to be actual del Sartos, I expected it to fetch a decent price. But it sold for just £10,800. We might yet see it again...
Sotheby's Old Master evening sale preview
July 6 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
The headline lot tonight at Sotheby's will be the £15-20m Guardi, View of the Rialto Bridge. It must surely sell, and may even beat the estimate, for it is one of the finest Venetian views ever painted. I hear that Christie's first had it in their grasp, but Sotheby's seem to have trumped them. It is the last lot of the evening, so doubtless people will stay to see what it makes. Will it beat Christie's triumphant price last night for the £22.4m Stubbs? Perhaps...
Other highlights include a newly discovered Correggio, Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist. This has an estimate of £2-3m. I'm slightly puzzled by the condition: the features have all been re-inforced by an old campaign of re-touching, hence the strange look in the faces. Doubtless it will improve dramatically with cleaning. Or maybe not.
I spent a while looking at the exceptional Portrait of a Carmelite Monk on offer at Sotheby's with an estimate of £600-800,000. What a picture. Despite some damage to the left, it is in excellent state, and, being on panel, the colours seem as fresh as the day it was painted. Whoever it is by, it will surely fly above the rather conservative estimate.
[More below]
Personally, my instinct is still to lean towards Rubens. That is also the view of a great many people whose opinion I respect very highly, some of them leading scholars in their own right. However, the main group who say it is not by Rubens, but by Van Dyck, are the Rubenianum (the centre for Rubens studies). They see a contrast between Rubens' other portraits of monks, which are more formal. So I guess if the Rubenianum say it ain't by Rubens, then it can't be.
And yet... Here is a picture that has descended in the ownership of Rubens' family. Furthermore, although traditional identifications must always be treated with caution, the picture's former title of 'Rubens' Confessor' would explain the informal nature of the portrait, which is painted rather like a study. I wonder if, therefore, some scholars have been too hasty in jettisoning the evidence of the provenance, subject matter and former attribution to Rubens. It is notable that the Sotheby's catalogue entry makes it clear there is very little certainly known comparable work by Van Dyck to compare it too. As I said below, it seems to be something of a fashion these days to take things from Rubens and give them to 'early Van Dyck'. Perhaps, rather like the early Rembrandt Research Project, the Rubenianum's attributions will alter again as the organisation evolves.
Personally, I still see stylistic similarities in the Carmelite Monk with Rubens' work of the same period. The hatchings and rough impasto suggests that it is missing its final layer of finish, and one sees a similar approach in a number of Rubens' studies, most notably the study for the head of a moor in four positions in Brussels. Mind you, this last picture used to be called 'Van Dyck', so who knows...
"The research geek"
July 6 2011
So says the Radio Times of me in a review of the final instalment of 'Fake or Fortune?':
I also love the way Mould's research geek, the wonderfully named Dr Bendor Grosvenor, lurks in a darkened room poring over laptops and catalogues, hunting for 'sleepers' - paintings that aren't what they seem. He finds a cracker this week, a painting on sale in Cape Town for £800 that might, just might, be a lost Rembrandt.
All will be revealed this Sunday at 7pm on BBC1...
Rubens was British?
July 6 2011
So says The Independent, when reporting last night's sale at Christie's of the spectacular Stubbs. Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath made £22m (including premium). Rob Hastings writes:
Even by the standards of the formidable horse that it celebrates, it would have had to go some way to surpass the record for the most expensive painting by a British artist – the near £50m accrued in 2002 for The Massacre of the Innocents by another of the Old Masters, Sir Peter Paul Rubens.
Never mind...
My little prediction below wasn't too far out - I said £18m, and it sold at the lower estimate of £20m. Bloomberg reports that it sold for a single bid in the room to Piers Davies Fine Art (Piers is newly established in New York and used to work for Christie's). They also say that the picture was guaranteed. An earlier edition of the Bloomberg story said that the guarantor was Irish horse-owner John Magner, but this fact has now been deleted.
Phew...
July 6 2011
Picture: BG
Now that the Masterpiece fair is over, I should be able to resume normal service. Apologies for the lack of posts lately...
We sold some more pictures in the end (tho' only one of them was sold by me). I think Masterpiece is a good fair, and superbly organised. It will take another year or two to reach its potential, but there's no reason it shouldn't become the world's pre-eminent fine art fair. It might even topple TEFAF from its perch - after all, wouldn't you rather go to a fair in London than Maastricht? For unless you've got a private jet (or indeed a Spitfire), Maastricht is a pain to get to...
Christie's Old Master evening sale preview
July 4 2011
It's hard to know where to begin with Christie's almost epic evening sale (Tuesday 5th July). What a stellar collection of pictures they have assembled.
Let's start with the £20-30m Stubbs, Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath (above). Will it sell? If it does, it will double the existing record for a Stubbs, set recently by Sotheby's. I hope it sells, for the price will put old British art into the bracket usually reserved for contemporary and post-war works.
But, I wonder... It's a lot of money for (whisper it) a not particularly exciting composition. Perhaps it's because I find equestrian pictures rather dull in general (odd, I know, for someone named after a sodding horse), but is the picture really more enticing than, say, the beautiful Poussin that failed to sell recently at £15m-£20m? That said, click here to listen to Christie's John Stainton make a persuasive case for the picture. It is also in superb condition. Christie's seem confident it will sell, and I doubt they would want to risk another high-profile buy-in. So here's a daring prediction for you: I reckon it will sell, perhaps at about the £18m mark (and possibly to someone more interested in horses than art...).
Christie's also have not one but two of the best Gainsboroughs to come on the market for at least the last ten years. Mrs William Villebois is the sort of picture one usually finds only in the Frick or Huntington collections. £4-6m may seem a bit high, but it might well do even better. Colonel John Bullock is hardly any less magnificent, and estimated at £3.5-5m. The question is, are there enough Gainsborough buyers out there to sustain two full-lengths at that sort of price?
Other highlights include a del Sarto at £2.5-3.5m, a fine Henry VIII at £300-500k (disclaimer, formerly owned by Philip Mould Ltd), and a flamboyant Robert Peake full-length at £1-1.5m. The latter may be over-priced. Perhaps the most interesting lot will be the Michelangelo drawing at £3-5m. It's nice, but that's a lot of money to shell out for what is little more than a fragment in less than ideal condition.
New Correggio discovery
July 4 2011
A Vatican painting previously thought to be a copy after Correggio has been cleaned. Now, it is believed to be by him.
The 'most seductive image in British Art'?
July 4 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
It's a good line to spin, but I'm not sure I find Lely's portrait of Nell Gwyn (on sale this week at Sotheby's) that seductive. I don't think Lely could really do seductive...
'Fake or Fortune?' - The final verdict
July 3 2011
Above is my favourite Tweet in response to last night's programme.
Mizzoryguts, if you're still chuckling, think of my Dad: he's been laughing his nuts off for 33 years...
Connoisseurship in Crisis?
July 3 2011
Picture: Courtauld Institute
The picture above, The Procuress after Dirck van Baburen (see the original here), belongs to the Courtauld Institute in London. It was donated to them in 1960 as a work by the notorious forger Hans van Meegeren. However, two years ago, the Courtauld's investigations revealed that it was in fact not a fake, but a 17thC copy. It was even suggested that the picture belonged to Vermeer, for the same subject appears in the background of two of his paintings.
The Courtauld's findings were first published in the Art Newspaper in September 2009:
A “fake” in the Courtauld Gallery, believed to be by the master forger Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), is a genuine Dutch Golden Age painting, new research has revealed. It is a version of The Procuress, a 1622 brothel scene by Dirck van Baburen, which is also depicted in the background of two works by Vermeer. It is now believed that the Courtauld’s painting may, in fact, be the work that Vermeer once had.
None of this sounded quite right to me, so we decided to investigate further for a possible episode of 'Fake or Fortune?'. The Courtauld kindly allowed us to see the picture in their conservation studio. It not only looked to me straight away like a fake, but a fake by van Meegeren. His style is distinctive, particularly in the way he constructs faces.
The picture has now been conclusively proved to be by van Meegeren on 'Fake or Fortune?'. There is no doubting van Meegeren was a rogue and a wrong'un, but I feel rather drawn to him. I like to imagine him laughing with incredulity at the sight of leading art historians declaring his paintings to be originals, decades after his death. The intriguing thing is that although van Meegeren conceded he had owned The Procuress, he denied repeatedly that he painted it, claiming his wife bought it in an antique shop. The question is, therefore, how many more of his fakes are still out there?
Agustus John's house...
July 2 2011
...has been badly damaged by fire. John lived there from 1927 until his death in 1961.
Sauce
July 1 2011
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
Behold – a newly discovered portrait of Nell Gwyn, Charles II’s most famous mistress.
You might think that portraits of Nell abound, but in fact she’s a rare sitter. The vast majority of ‘Nell Gwyns’ you see are usually someone’s dull great-granny spiced up with a false label.
This picture has not previously been known. It is the most sexually suggestive portrait of her, indeed probably of any English late 17th Century court figure. The likeness is taken from Samuel Cooper’s now lost miniature, which is recorded in a number of engravings (see an example at the NPG). Here, Nell is shown washing sausages, an act which would immediately have been known to a contemporary viewer as rather naughty (the allusion goes back to Brueghel). To add to the satirical raunchiness of the image, Nell is shown in virginal white. The portrait is the Stuart equivalent of a saucy postcard. It has, until now, been in the collection of her descendants.
'I would have liked to have been Poussin...'
July 1 2011
Picture: Dulwich Picture Gallery
So says Cy Twombly, the subject of a new exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, 'Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters' (until 25th Sept). The show has good reviews so far: The Guardian gives it 4/5. See a selection of exhibits here.
Luke Syson, off to the Met
July 1 2011
The National Gallery's current curator of Italian Paintings pre-1500, Luke Syson, has been appointed Curator of the Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Perks of being an art dealer no. 42
June 30 2011
Picture: BG
Apologies for the lack of blogging lately - it's been quite busy at the Masterpiece fair.Â
Today was the sort of day where you think - 'how lucky I am to be an art dealer'. First, we saw an ultra-rare acquisition at the gallery. Then my colleague Emma Rutherford sold two pictures at the fair (so that's Emma 3 - Bendor & Philip, 0), and we had what we call in the trade 'meaningful conversations' with other potential clients. But really, if you're an art evangelist like me, it's just nice to talk about pictures with people, whether they buy them or not. And today there was plenty of talking.
Finally, in the evening we had a charity gala in aid of Clic Sargent. There were cocktails, celebrities, a band fronted by F1 team boss Eddie Jordan (he's in the funny shirt, above, playing the spoons), and a silent auction with various enticing lots. One of them was a ride in the two seater Spitfire seen in the photo. And the winning bidder was... me!
There are few things I'm more obsessed with than art, but Spitfires are one of them. So although it was (gulp) not cheap, I'm now rather tragically excited. I was so keen to secure the lot that, as the clock ticked down, I inadvertently bid against myself. Which was a bit stupid, but as the auctioneer said, it's all for a good cause...
Now I just need to sell every painting on our stand to help pay for it. And I also need to check the small print - I'm assuming that 'a ride in a two-seater Spitfire' means it actually takes off...
Sotheby's 2 -1 Christie's
June 29 2011
Picture: Christie's
That's the score for this week's contemporary and post-war evening sales. Christie's made the headlines this morning with the sale of Francis Bacon's Study for a Portrait (above) for £18m. But when it came to the totals raised, Sotheby's triumphed by a long way - £108.8m vs £78.8m.
Sotheby's Campbell's Soup picture by Andy Warhold failed to sell at £3.5-4.5m, however.
