European Buyers Heat Up London's Old Master Sales

LONDON. More than £100 million ($175 million) was spent on Old Master paintings and drawings at Sotheby’s and Christie’s during a busy round ofsales in London from July 5-8. The Part One evening sales at the two auction houses’ including paintings from the Hon. Robert Wills collection at Sotheby’s and the Antonio de Sommer Champalimaud collection at Christie’s’totaled £87.8 million ($153.7 million), generously above the combined presale estimate of £60 million and more than double the £40.5 million ($74.9 million) realized at comparable Part One sales last July. The result was all the more remarkable given the terrorist attacks on the capital the morning of July 7, before the Part One sales occurred. They did little to dampen the enthusiasm of buyers, who turned up in force and were bidding with confidence for the finest works. The sales confirmed London as the top market for pre-19th-century art. ‘London handles 50 percent more Old Masters than New York because Europe is where most of the buyers reside,’ says Alexander Bell, head of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s, where, the house reports, 76 percent of the week’s buyers were from Europe and 19 percent from the United States. In the battle for market share, Christie’s investment in expertise in this department seemed to have paid off as the house drew level with Sotheby’s for the first time in many years, with each firm garnering just above 50 million ($87.5 million). Christie’s said 70 percent of its buyers this week were from Europe and the U.K., and 25 percent from the U.S. $11.4M Del Sarto Tops Drawings Auctions Christie’s had the stronger selection of drawings, and its sale on July 5 was bolstered by the inclusion of a large number of 19th-century drawings by such artists as Giovanni Boldini, Honor Daumier and Odilon Redon. The auction chalked up £9.8 million ($17.2 million), one of the highest totals of the last 15 years. The top three lots all set record prices. A pair of landscapes by Jan van de Velde II (circa 1593-1641), which had belonged to the Sackville family of Knole Park in Kent since the 18th century, were sold for a triple-estimate £355,200 ($622,310). A rediscovered pastel self-portrait by Maurice- Quentin de la Tour (1704-1788)’L’autoportrait a` l’index, known principally through later reproductions’was bought by the Society of Friends of the Louvre for the Louvre Museum for £657,600, or $1.1 million (estimate: £200,000/300,000). A drawing of the Head of St Joseph Looking Down . . ., by Andrea del Sarto (Andrea D’Angiolo, 1486-1530), fell to London dealer Jean-Luc Baroni for £6.5 million, or $11.4 million (unpublished estimate: £1.5 million)’the third-highest price for any Old Master drawing at auction. The work, which relates to del Sarto’s painting The Bracci Holy Family, in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, was the first major example by the Renaissance master to reach the market since 1936. The Sotheby’s July 6 sale had nothing to match the quality of these drawings. A group of 55 drawings that had been seized by the Nazis fromCzech collector Dr. Arthur Feldman marked the first occasion in which works of art confiscated during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia had come to the international market. But these were mainly lower-value pieces by Central European artists. Several other works soared over their estimates. The work Adam and Eve Cast Out of the Garden of Eden, by Paolo Farinati (1524-1606), went to the European trade for £40,800, or $71,400 (estimate: £3,500/4,500). The U.S. trade paida quadruple-estimate £142,400 ($249,200) for The Sacrifice of Pelias to Neptune, by Agostino Carracci (1560-1609). And a private European collector purchased the top lot, View of the Piazza del Popolo, by Vanvitelli (Gaspar van Wittel, 1652/3-1736), for £192,800, or $337,400 (estimate: £60,000/80,000). But the overall total of £1.7 million, or $2.97 million (estimate: £250,000/350,000). It was followed by the artist’s painting A view of Venice, which fetched £388,800, or $680,400 (estimate: £250,000/350,000), from another collector, bidding against London dealer Richard Green. However, the Old Masters were outshone by the British pictures in this collection. The large watercolor Lake of Lucerne, by J.M.W. (Joseph Mallord William) Turner (1775-1851), came within a hair of a record when it fell to Green for £1.8 million, or $3.2 million (estimate: £400,000/600,000). An Italianate panorama, The Thames at Westminster Bridge with Barges, by Samuel Scott (circa 1702-72), made a record £1.6 million, or $2.8 million (estimate: £800,000/1.2 million), as did A Royal Yacht Firing a Salute, by Charles Brooking (1723-59), which made £198,400, or $348,000 (estimate: £60,000/80,000). The £8.8 million ($15.4 million) sale far exceeded its presale estimate of £5/7 million. Christie’s had much higher-value single-owner sales on July 6-7 in the shape of 202 lots of 18th-century French and Italian paintings, antique furniture, sculpture and works of art from the estate of Portuguese financier Antonio de Sommer Champalimaud (1918-2004). Valued at around £15 million ($26.2 million), the offerings fetched £39 million ($68.4 million). It was the second-highest total for a single owner sale in Europe, topped only by the £57.7 million Rothschild sale in 1999. Leading the works-of-art section was a pair of Chinese export porcelain leopards that brought £2.36 million ($4.1 million) from London dealers Cohen and Cohen (estimate: £400,000/600,000)’a record for any Chinese export work of art at auction. But the paintings in the collection provided most of the top lots, with Italian ‘vedute’ proving to be one of the strongest cards of the week. The opulent painting The Bucintoro at the Molo . . ., by Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768), was the subject of a long bidding duel before it fell to a private phone bidder for a record £11.4 million, or $20.1 million (estimate: £4/6 million). The underbidder was Israeli collector Sammy Ofer, better known as a buyer of Impressionist and modern art. A small pair of Venetian views by Canaletto was sold to a European collector comfortably above the £1 million high estimate for £1.8 million ($3.2 million), while another European collector paid double- and treble-estimate prices for three works by Guardi. The most expensive of these was The Island of San Cristoforo near Murano, which made £1.8 million, or $3.1 million (estimate: £600,000/800,000). French paintings in the collection, some that had come from the Rothschild family through the famous Wildenstein Gallery, also performed well.