The July Old Master Sales, in London, were not thrilling, but they did show some solid results, which will keep the trade and collectors happy over the summer.
Sotheby’s Day Sales, of the lesser fry, totalled £3.716M and all but 20 of the 135 lots found buyers. The one big surprise was the £409,000 for Lot 334, a Van Dyck (1599-1641), sketch of The Head of a Bearded Man against an estimate of £100,000-150,000.
Christie’s Day Sale was larger, with 199 lots, 50 bought in and a total of £6.255M. Of course , one has to remember, with these third division paintings, that the sell-through rate is quite high because the estimates have gone back to where they were 35 years ago!
Poor Bonhams had a tough time of it as their star lots, two Turner watercolours, not seen for generations and given by Ruskin to Elizabeth Bunney, widow of John Bunney, an artist who worked for Ruskin, failed to sell. Estimates of £350,000-550,000 and £300-500,000 proved to be too optimistic, especially when one bears in mind that the surfaces were slightly odd and these two Swiss landscapes did not read well.
The Evening Sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s were very similar in quality, size and total. Christie’s 39 lots realised a total of £38.94M. Their top prices were £9.67M for a fine portrait of the Duke of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), consigned by the estate of the late Sir Robert Ogden and two immaculate still lifes by Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) on panel. These two are slightly old-fashioned taste, but their condition and quality took them to £6.5M (estimate of £3-4M) and £5.54M (estimate of £2.5-3.5M). There were two lots bought in and a Bellotto withdrawn. I am not sure whether this withdrawal was due to condition problems or the fact that the picture is not by Bellotto!
Sotheby’s Sale total was a fraction smaller at £37.711M for 45 lots. They had a slightly higher failure rate than Christie’s with 10 lots not finding buyers on the day. The top price was for a very early Rembrandt (1606-1669), in fact he appears in it, top right. This painting turned up in a Continental auction a decade ago and made €1.5M on that occasion. The story goes that Rembrandt took the unfinished picture ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’ from Leiden, where his first studio was, to Amsterdam. At some point an artist in his Amsterdam studio finished the work, rather clumsily. The overpaint was subsequently removed and what we now have is a ¾ finished picture. The figures in the back of the picture are finished, but they become more sketchy as we work towards the foreground. That was the way Rembrandt worked. On the day, it made £8M (hammer) to the Guarantor against an estimate of £8-12M.
The other eye-catching canvas was the massive Stag and Hinds by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) ‘Scene in Braemar-Highland Deer’. This picture was much admired and made a whopping £5.9M, a world record for the artist. To me it looked as if it should have been in a glass case and, of course, it was painted from stuffed specimens. Have you ever tried to get close to a stag to paint his portrait? It’s not easy and could be quite dangerous!
Curiously, no-one has ever asked what the black and white bird is doing, standing on a rock to the left. He is a male Snow Bunting in summer plumage, one of Britain’s rarest breeding birds. When you couple him with the Mountain Hare, Red Deer and a Golden Eagle flying away with something white (which I hope is a Ptarmigan and not a lamb), then, you have a group of specifically tundra-dwelling animals. I think this picture is a celebration of the Highlands, but no-one seems to have recognised this, so far.
All in all, the first week of July showed solid results with just over £86M – worth of Old Master paintings selling. I was saddened, however, to see a four-foot canvas by Claude (1600-1682), an artist so revered and imitated by Wilson, Constable and Turner make a paltry £76,800 against an estimate of £80,00-120,000 at Sotheby’s. He didn’t even manage to get into the Evening Sale. Fashion is a very fickle friend.
