Rachel Ruysch – The Flourishing Career of a Forgotten Old Master

Posted on March 12, 2025March 13, 2025 by David Dallas

Continuing on the theme of famous female Old Master painters, I am turning my attention to Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750). She has many virtues. Apart from being a wonderful painter, she has been very thoughtful to future generations of scholars by almost always signing her works and giving her age, so a chronology of her oeuvre is simple to work out. This is a practice she began at 15 and continued until she was 83, although she lived to be 86 and was married for 52 years.

She had several advantages at the start of her career. The first of which was being born in the Hague to Frederick Ruysch, a professor of anatomy and botany (she was to become the most famous flower painter of her generation) and Maria Post, whose uncle Frans was a distinguished landscape painter famous for his views painted in the Dutch colony of Nieuw Holland, in Brazil. Another boon was to be apprenticed to the brilliant Delft still life painter Willem van Aelst (1627-1683), who had so impressed Ferdinand II de Medici, when court painter in Florence, that he gave van Aelst a gold medal and chain at a public ceremony to acknowledge his genius.

Her early works are forest floor scenes in the manner of Matthias Withoos and Otto Marseus van Schrieck, which allowed her to introduce various insects and lizards amongst the plant roots, which she would have copied as a child in her father’s private museum. He had invented a technique for embalming plants and animals, the secrets of which he refused to divulge.

At the age of 15 she was apprenticed to Willem van Aelst and he taught her the art of composing bunches of flowers in a vase in a naturalistic way, even though many of the plants could not have been blooming at the same time. The meticulously painted petals are enlivened by dewdrops, ants, caterpillars and other plant-loving insects.

In 1693 she married the portrait painter Juriaen Pool and they subsequently had 10 children. Childcare was not a problem, as Rachel’s flower pieces sold for between 750-1,250 guilders. To put this in context, Rembrandt rarely received more than 500 guilders for a picture in his lifetime, but he did produce the ‘1000 guilder’ print. In the portrait of her by her husband, Juriaen Pool, she sits with her head in her right hand, a symbol of melancholy and genius, since antiquity, whilst her husband, who is in the background both physically and metaphorically, points to one of her pictures on the easel.

At the end of the century, she and Juriaen moved to The Hague and became members of the Painter’s Guild there in 1701. She was the first female member of the Artists’ Society, The Confrerie Pictura. From 1708-1716 she worked in Dusseldorf as Court Painter to Johann Wilhelm, the Elector Palatine.

She continued to produce brilliant flower still lifes into the middle of the 18th Century and her reputation was such that at her death in 1750, eleven poets paid their respects by writing poems about her.

Although she has always been a sought-after artist by connoisseurs, she is not a household name today. As she was a relatively prolific painter, over 250 works by her are known, she appears at auction on a regular basis, 71 paintings in the last 35 years. The world record price at auction is £1.65M and 9 of her paintings have made more than half a million dollars. If you would like to see works by Rachel Ruysch, The National Gallery in London has three. Furthermore, there is a wonderful exhibition dedicated to her work, currently at the Altepinakotech in Munich until March 16th. It then relocates to Toledo, Ohio from April 13th – July 22nd and ends its tour at the MFA in Boston from August 23rd to December 7th. I think it more than justifies a trip to New England in the fall!

PS…
When she was around the age of 50, she won 70,000 guilders in a lottery and gave up painting for a while!

Old Masters Sales December 2024

Posted on January 9, 2025March 20, 2025 by David Dallas

I was very alarmed when I previewed the December 2024 Old Master Sales in London that there weren’t many pictures, no masterpieces and too high a percentage of pictures were in less than perfect state.

What was going to happen? I felt very discouraged. I have talked before about the effects of geo-politics and the economy on the timing of Old Master sales, but why weren’t there more paintings appearing out of necessity – the old 3D chestnuts of death, divorce and destitution? Sotheby’s had just 26 lots of which two were of prints and two of late 19^th Century pictures, hardly Old Masters. Christie’s was the same with 26 lots, one of which was sculpture and three late 19^th Century pictures. The Day Sales were even thinner with sculpture, 19^th Century paintings, watercolours, drawings and even Limoges enamels to bulk them out. It doesn’t bode well for the future.

As it happens, the sales, in relation to their estimates, were quite strong. Six lots failed to sell at Sotheby’s and the same at Christie’s, but there, the two auction houses diverge. The Sotheby’s total was £24.2M and Christie’s a very modest £13.99M.

The star of the Sotheby’s sale was a Botticelli Madonna and Child, that realized £9.96M; not far short of the Christie’s total. Botticelli is, of course, a magic name and this picture hadn’t been on the market for 120 years. They also had a handsome Stubbs of a Pointer in a Landscape. I love his work, but the colouring in this oil painting was most peculiar. The landscape, instead of being a vibrant green, as Constable would have painted it, was made up of smudgy pinks and browns, making it look like an aquatint! It made a sound £1.8M, nevertheless.

Christie’s had a powerful oil sketch of a prancing horse by van Dyck, which had a hastily sketched landscape on the reverse, so the purchaser, at £3.4M, got two for the price of one. They also offered an unusual still life by Clara Peeters of a Stack of Cheeses. This made £655,000 against an estimate of £100-150,000, just showing the continuing interest in works by female artists, especially when they are slightly off-beat.

My favourite offering of the week was the pair of what I suppose one would call ‘fancy pictures’, rather than portraits, that Bonhams offered. They were of a girl selling watercress and a girl selling flowers by the German artist Johan Zoffany, who worked for many years in London and was a founder member of the Royal Academy. I had catalogued this pair of paintings 30 years ago and was very surprised and sad when they failed to sell then. This time round, having established that a distant ancestor of the vendor had bought them directly from the artist, they took wing at a very healthy £991,000 with premiums.

What do these results tell us? That the supply of good/great is diminishing, but there is a market for them and the prices are strong. The same cannot be said of third-rate Old Masters. There is almost no demand at all. It’s not just a price correction, there aren’t any bids.

There will be more Old Master news after the February sales in New York, which looked much more interesting than their London counterparts, when I viewed the best lots in London last week. In particular, Sotheby’s are selling the remnants of the celebrated collection of Aso Tivitian. He was a philanthropic, Armenian billionaire who made his money out of microchips. He started life in New York as a cab driver before getting a scholarship to Columbia University. He has left a painting to the Frick and one to the Met in New York and over 330 works of art to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The “remnants” are by no means lesser fry, they just don’t fit with the public collections he has supported. They are significant paintings in a wonderful state of preservation. He also collected great English furniture and European sculpture. Their sale should give us a more accurate idea of how much taste there is for Old Masters, currently.

The Legacy of Elisabetta Sirani: Art, Fame, and Mystery

Posted on October 22, 2024November 25, 2024 by David Dallas

This week’s female artist is the fascinating Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665).

She was born in Bologna on January 8^th 1638 to Margherita and Giovanni Andrea Sirani. Fortunately for her, her father Gian’Andrea Sirani was a favourite pupil of Guido Reni and took over his practice as teacher and master in the first Life School in Bologna. Naturally, Elisabetta studied under her father and, therefore, absorbed the technique of Guido. She also studied the paintings of other great Bolognese baroque painters such as Annibale Carracci, Simone Cantarini and Carlo Cignani. She was well educated, liked music and was familiar with the Bible, lives of the Saints and classical mythology, all of which provided subject matter for her paintings.

By 1654, when she was only 16, she took over the running of her father’s workshop, as Giovanni Andrea had become incapacitated by Gout. I am not sure why Gout was so prevalent in previous centuries and caused so much trouble. Joseph Banks in the late 18^th Century, for example, would take to a wheelchair for several months at a time. Enough on Gout!

Elisabetta Sirani Timoclea killing the Captain of Alexander the Great

Elisabetta Sirani – Self Portrait

From this moment on, Elisabetta, the eldest of four children became the family’s main breadwinner by a combination of income from her portraits and other commissions and tuition fees. She had more than a dozen pupils and set up the first lay, as opposed to convent, school for women artists. She was also a prolific painter, as well as celebrated teacher. She produced over 200 paintings, 13 altarpieces, 15 etchings and hundreds of drawings. In fact, she was so prolific that many people accused her of using pupils to paint the pictures, which was, after all, standard studio practice. However, Elisabetta tended to sign her pictures and in order to rebuke the accusations that she did not paint them herself, invited her accusers on May 13^th 1664 to her studio to watch her paint a portrait in a single sitting!

She became a celebrity and anyone of status visiting Bologna would ask to be invited to her studio to watch her at work. Her clientele was made up of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Cardinals, rich merchants and the church, not only from Bologna but across Europe. All of this is surprising, as she was dead by the age of 27. The cause of her death is the subject of mystery and speculation. Some say she was poisoned by a jealous maid, others that she developed ulcers because of her excessive workload.

Elisabetta Sirani – Madonna and Child

Portia wounding her thigh

In any event, the city of Bologna went into mourning at her death and she was given a most elaborate funeral. A massive catafalque was created with a life size sculpture of Elisabetta inside it. There was music composed in her honour by the most famous musicians in Bologna and orations and poems written in honour of the “Lamented Paintbrush”. She was buried in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, in the same tomb as Guido Reni, who had been her father’s tutor.

A word on the Catafalque (temple of honour)

What we are looking at is a design for the catafalque by Matteo Borboni (c.1610-1667) who oversaw the decorations for her funeral. The finished monument was made of wood painted to look like marble and the life-size statue of Elisabetta at her easel was made of wax. This gives you some idea of the scale of the temple and the high regard in which Elisabetta “Gem of Italy” was held.

If you are lucky enough to own one of her paintings, make sure it is properly insured. An average Madonna and Child is worth between £50,000 and £80,000. The top price at auction is $505,000 for “Portia wounding her thigh”, sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2008.

A drawing of Elisabetta’s Catafalque by Matteo Barboni (1610-1667)

Old Master Sales July 2024

Posted on August 6, 2024August 9, 2024 by David Dallas

The Old Master market, judging by the London sales in early July, continues to be split between the desirable and the unloved. The Day Sales, for the “unloved” were very flat affairs. Christie’s managed a total of £3.489M for 170 lots, with 36 unsold – mostly sculptures and watercolours, which they now include with oil paintings as there is such a dearth of viable lots; while Sotheby’s total was £2.178M for 182 lots, 65 of which were bought in.

The evening sales painted a much rosier picture, with only 10 out of 58 lots failing to sell on the day, although they may have found buyers, subsequently. Christie’s had much the better sale, in fact, their wonderful Titian of The Rest on The Flight into Egypt made over £5M more than the whole of the Sotheby’s sale! It was estimated at £15-25M and was knocked down for £17.56M including buyer’s premium. Other star lots at Christie’s include the beautiful Quentin Metsys of The Madonna of the Cherries which made £10.66M including buyer’s premium to the Getty Museum, against an estimate of £8-12M. It is interesting to note that this picture was offered by Christie’s in 2015 described as a studio work and made £200,000. At that time, a green curtain, painted at a later date, obscured the beautiful landscape seen through the window. Subsequent cleaning and restoration have revealed that this is the prime version of a much-copied composition. There was also a handsome Frans Hals Portrait of a Gentleman, which made a solid £5.7M.

It was a bad week for George Stubbs the great Liverpudlian, 18th Century horse painter, however. His magnificent Mares and Foals offered by Christie’s with an estimate of £7-10M failed to find a buyer, as did the fine double horse portrait by him offered at Sotheby’s with an estimate of £400,000-600,000.

The Christie’s evening sale achieved a very healthy £43,594,800, which was their best result for 10 years, while Sotheby’s total was a less impressive £12.366M.

One of my favourite pictures of the week, was the view of a Baroque Sculpture Gallery by the Dordrecht painter Samuel van Hoogstraten, which made £356,000 including buyer’s premium at Bonhams. Hoogstraten was a man of many talents, poet, painter, art theoretician and sometime pupil of Rembrandt. There is a wonderful trompe l’oeil, peep show with views of the Interior of a 17th Century Dutch House, by him in the National Gallery, London. It is well worth a visit.

The message from the week’s sales is that if you have a masterpiece by an Old Master make sure the insurance value is high enough and if you have works by minor masters, check current values to make sure your premium isn’t too high.

Angelica Kauffman

Posted on May 14, 2024August 23, 2024 by David Dallas

Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807), who was a founder member of the Royal Academy and one of the most soughtafter portrait painters of her generation, is the subject of a major retrospective Exhibition at the Royal Academy, the first of its type in Britain in my lifetime.

The press release from the R.A. describes her as “one of the most celebrated artists of the 18th Century” and indeed she was. She was born in Switzerland and trained under her father before moving to various cities in Italy, ending up in Rome in 1763 where she became friends with Nathaniel Dance, the English portrait and history painter.

He, like many of his male contemporaries, fell under the spell of Angelica and sent her portrait of the actor, David Garrick, painted in Rome, to the Free Society in London, where it caused a stir. Who was this Swiss girl in her very early 20s who could paint such a powerful portrait? Even the thought of this young girl staring into the face of a man 25 years her senior, as Garrick was, must have caused a frisson. When she arrived in London a year later, she was inundated with commissions to paint portraits. These she undertook and specialised in painting the most famous women of the day and “history” pictures, whose subjects were taken from classical history or literature and which depicted female protagonists, for the most part. This altered the direction of European Art.

History painting, despite the promotion of Sir Joshua Reynolds, President of The Royal Academy, who was rumoured to have had an affair with Angelica, whom he referred to as “Miss Angel”, was not very popular in England and Angelica left London for Italy in 1781. In that year she married Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian painter working in England and they lived first in Venice and latterly in Rome, where her salon/studio was to quote the R.A. flyer “a hub for the City’s cultural life”. Goethe and Canova were frequent visitors and Canova organised her funeral. She took Goethe on art appreciation trips every Sunday in Rome and contemporaries described her as “the most cultivated woman in Europe”.

But what of her paintings themselves? I confess that I have always found them rather unlovable. I was steeped in classical mythology and history as a child, so I don’t find her subject matter dry or forbidding. It is her palette and technique I don’t like. She is painting in the age of Neo-Classicism, so one expects a clarity of line, which is wholly missing in her work. It may be that the smudgy outlines are a result of her early training in Italy, where the Sfumato Technique was so popular. This avoids harsh outlines and encourages a smokey, blurred edge to figures and draperies. This blurriness has, to my mind, crept into her choice of colours too, which lack purity and brilliance. Angelica likes dirty golds, muddy oranges, and beige. Compare her self-portrait with that of her younger contemporary Elizabeth Vigee-Le-Brun (1753-1842) and tell me who you think is the greater painter. Finally, with so much of her work based on ideas of Classical beauty, I am not sure she is any good at catching a likeness. Compare her portrait of her friend and admirer, Sir Joshua Reynolds, with one of Reynolds’ own self-portraits. We know exactly what Reynolds looked like, because he painted himself so many times and they do not vary, except in age.

Angelica’s portrait does not look anything like him. It could be anybody.

I am sorry, Angelica, to make these harsh judgements about your work, but I have always felt you were overrated as a painter, not as a human being. I would have loved to have sat next to you at dinner.

Anyway, don’t take my word for how good or bad Angelica Kauffman is as a painter. It is just my opinion.

Over the past few decades, her reputation has soared and she has an international following. Her prices at auction have followed suit. Twenty-two of her paintings have made six figure sums and the top price is $1.1M. Most of these pictures have been group portraits, but not all. In 2001 Sotheby’s sold a self-portrait by Angelica, in a painted oval, for over £420,000. Anyone who has inherited a painting by Angelica Kauffman should be aware of current auction prices to make certain they are properly insured.

Old Master Sales December 2023

Posted on January 30, 2024March 20, 2025 by David Dallas

The December Old Master Sales were rather lacklustre with the three major London salerooms, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams reporting combined totals for their five sales of £55.8M, just less than December 2022’s feeble total of £56.3M.

One can hardly blame consignors for not wishing to offer great paintings at auction in the current geo-political climate. These totals would have been nearly 40% lower but for an early Rembrandt of the Adoration of the Magi sold by Sotheby’s to the guarantor for £9.5M and two Canalettos (1697-1768) (not a pair, but part of a set of Venetian views), sold at Christie’s for £8.2M. They had never previously been published and were, therefore, ‘fresh’ to the market.

Interestingly, the Rembrandt at Sotheby’s, had been offered by Christie’s Amsterdam, two years ago, as ‘Circle of Rembrandt’, with an estimate of €10-15,000. It was knocked down to the Sotheby’s consignor for €860,000. So, somebody else had recognised its potential, too.

My favourite painting from all the sales was the most unusual ‘The Virgin in Prayer’, by the enigmatic Flemish artist, Michiel Sweerts (1618-1664).

This is a picture within a picture. Sweerts paints himself, peeping shyly round the edge of a framed picture of the Virgin in Prayer, which he has painted and, which he is showing to you, the onlooker, with a cloudy sky behind him. It is a touching picture, not only for the sacred nature of the central subject, but because here is the apprehensive artist, watching anxiously to gauge your response to his painting. It made a well-deserved £1.4M hammer price, 3 ½ times the lower estimate.

If the market is wary of exposing Old Master masterpieces at the current time, no such worries affected the group of beautiful Rembrandt etchings collected by the discerning Sam Josefowitz. There were some great rarities offered amongst the 70 lots offered in a dedicated catalogue and every print was in excellent condition. This was a collection for connoisseurs and museum curators. Every lot sold, mostly well above the top estimate and 51 world records were achieved for individual subjects. This catalogue and the 5 prints offered in their Old Master sale, grossed Christie’s £10.2M including buyer’s premium. The front cover lot of a Sea Shell, (Conus Marmoreus), which measures 97 x 132 mm and is an etching, engraving and drypoint on laid paper, made £730,800 with buyer’s premium. It is a natural object of profound beauty and simplicity. It was the top price of the sale and proves that whatever market conditions prevail, masterpieces will find their true level.

Adoration of the Magi and Shepherds

Posted on December 20, 2023March 20, 2025 by David Dallas

“A cold coming, we had of it, just the worst time of year for a journey and such a long journey”, is how T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ begins. Semi-desert can be very cold on a clear night, and we know it was clear, because the wise men were following a star.

No-one knows when our saviour was born, but the early, persecuted Christians, probably celebrated Jesus’ birth on December 25th because the Romans were celebrating ‘Sol Invictus’, the birth of the unconquered sun, and Saturnalia when people feasted, exchanged gifts and did not have time to watch what the subversive Christians were up to.

In 336A.D., when Constantine, a Christian convert was Emperor, the church in Rome began to formally celebrate Christmas Day on December 25th.

As a child, I was fascinated by descriptions of the aftermath of his birth – the Adorations by Magi and Shepherds and started a collection of secondhand Christmas cards of these subjects. What particularly fascinated me was the contrast between the elaborately dressed Magi, a Magus is a wise man, with their extravagant and costly gifts adoring the Christ child and the simplicity and piety of the shepherds in their ragged clothes and offering a precious lamb as a gift.

Two of my favourite treatments of this subject are The Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerrit van Honthorst in The National Gallery and the Portinari Altarpiece in the Uffizi. Honthorst (1592-1656), was a Dutchman from Utrecht, who with two friends visited Rome in the early 17th Century and fell under the spell of Caravaggio and adopted his dramatic use of chiaroscuro (light and shade). He was known as Gherardo dalle Notti, Gerard of the Night, in Rome. This picture was painted there in 1610.

The Portinari Altarpiece was commissioned by Tomasso Portinari, a prominent banker, working for the Medici in Bruges, from the brilliant Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes (c.1430/40-1482) around 1472-5. The shepherds have coarse, sunburnt faces, rough hands and grimy fingernails, all of which is accentuated when one looks at the beautiful Virgin Mary, with her pale skin and delicate hands.

Contrast these depictions of simple, pious shepherds, with Benozzo Gozzoli’s (c.1421-1497) ‘Procession of the Magi’ in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.

The richly caparisoned horses, the smartly attired attendants and the exotically dressed Magi exude a sense of wealth and power. Benozzo and at least one assistant completed this miraculous fresco over a few months in 1459.

These paintings remind me of happy Christmases past, and my scrapbook of Old Master adorations.

Winter Landscapes

Posted on December 19, 2023March 20, 2025 by David Dallas

Have you ever stopped to wonder why, in the ‘Golden Age’ of English landscape painting (1750-1850), there are so few winter landscapes by the major practitioners of the genre. In the 18th Century there are none by George Lambert, Richard Wlson or Thomas Gainsborough and one has to rely on examples by lesser fry such as de Loutherbourg, J.C. Ibbetson and George Smith of Chichester.

In the next generation we have just a handful. ‘A Frosty Morning’ painted by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) of 1812, a copy of Jacob Ruysdael, by John Constable ( 1776-1837), who loved Ruysdael’s paintings and owned 4 of them and two by Francis Danby, A.R.A (1793-1861). The Danbys are ‘An Ice Slide’ of 1849, exhibited at the R.A. in 1850 and a study of children skating outside a woodman’s cottage, painted in the early 1820s.

It seems to be very odd there are so few, when one considers how many winter landscapes were painted in the Netherlands in the 17th Century and how prized by collectors and admired by artists in England such paintings were.

I think in large part it is due to studio practice in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Artists would go out sketching from Spring to Autumn, when the weather was relatively clement and then work up the sketches into finished easel pictures in the winter.

Constable travelled with a large and a small sketchbook everywhere he went, to record things of interest, including on honeymoon. I would like to hear from anyone who has a better explanation!

John Constable and the Stour Valley

Posted on October 17, 2023August 9, 2024 by David Dallas

I can’t think of a painter who was as influenced by, or devoted to recording the landscape of his boyhood, as John Constable R.A. (1776-1837). He is famously recorded as saying: “Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate ‘my careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful.”

He was born in East Bergholt in Suffolk and the villages of the Stour Valley were the subjects of his early work. However, as Michael Rosenthal points out in his excellent book ‘Constable, the painter and his landscape’ published in 1983, it was not all plain sailing. Despite the familiarity and love of the place, there were emotional associations that precluded Constable painting certain aspects of his childhood landscape. For instance, he was incapable of painting land owned by his father, Golding, a successful farmer, mill owner and grain merchant, until Golding came to terms with is son’s desire to become a painter. Golding wanted him to join and then run the family business, as John’s elder brother had learning difficulties. By 1799, Golding had relented to some extent, granted his son a small allowance and John then entered the Royal Academy Schools.

In 1808 Golding gave him a small grain store in East Bergholt to convert into a studio, now owned by my friend, Susan Morris. She’s the only one of my friends who has a fridge magnet of her house! Father and son were truly reconciled.

In 1816 he married Maria Bicknell, whom he had known since 1809. Their love was a source of great comfort to Constable, but the union was not approved of by Maria’s grandfather, Dr Rhudde, rector of East Bergholt, who threatened to disinherit her. He thought the Constables were socially inferior. However, Golding and Ann Constable died in quick succession and John inherited one fifth of the family business, which eased the financial pressure.

Now with several children to support, he embarked on an ambitious plan to enhance his reputation by producing large canvases for exhibition in both London and Paris. He returned to his beloved Stour Valley for these and produced a series of ‘six footers’ (the size of the canvas), of which the most famous is ‘The Hay Wain’.

It was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1824, where it caused a sensation, because of its vibrant technique and colour and its truth to nature. It was awarded a gold medal by Charles X. Delacroix repainted the background of his ‘Massacre de Scio’, as a result of seeing it.

By the early 1820s, Maria was showing signs of tuberculosis and Constable took lodgings in Brighton for her health. He made numerous drawings of the South Downs and Coast, and produced a marvellous oil painting of the ‘Chain Pier, Brighton’, which was exhibited in 1827. Sadly, the sea air did not save Maria and after the birth of their seventh child, Maria died in November 1828. Constable was distraught. He wrote to his brother, also called Golding, ‘hourly do I feel the loss of my departed angel…the face of the world is totally changed for me’.

The period following Maria’s death was a profoundly melancholic one for Constable. He dressed in black and was prone to anxiety. I always think that Hadleigh Castle sums up Constable’s state of mind at this time. A lonely figure and his dog stand beside the ruined castle, whilst a storm approaches from the sea, with just two shafts of light to suggest some source of hope. The palette is subdued but the brushwork vigorous, the product of a troubled mind.

On a less sombre note, there is a charming story that Constable relates to his friend Archdeacon Fisher of Salisbury. He was travelling in the 1820s in a carriage from Ipswich to London with two strangers. By way of making conversation, he pointed out of the window and remarked “Don’t you think this is a beautiful landscape?” One of the strangers said “yes I do, Sir, but you should remember this is Constable country.”

Old Master Sales, July, London

Posted on July 18, 2023January 3, 2025 by David Dallas

The Old Master Sales in London last week proved once again that freshness to the market and condition are key to paintings achieving spectacular prices. The perfect example of this was the beautiful Artist’s Studio with a Seamstress by the enigmatic Flemish painter Michael Sweerts (1618-1664), which came up at Christie’s.

This was painted in Rome sometime between 1646-1652 and was unknown to scholars having spent most of its life in a Belgian castle. It had never been cleaned or lined in its almost 400 year history and sold for an astonishing £12.6M (including premium), 6 times the previous world record for the artist! Christie’s also had a pair of recently re-discovered portraits by Rembrandt (1606-1669) which hadn’t been seen since 1824. Despite being on tiny oak panels measuring just 8 ½ x 6 ½ ins they made a well-deserved £11.2M (including premium).

One of the stars of Sotheby’s evening sale was the panel of the Pentecost by the unidentified 15th Century Bruges Painter, known as The Master of the Baroncelli Portraits. Despite appearing as recently as 2010 at Christie’s, where it sold for £4.19M, its beautiful execution and almost pristine condition helped it soar to £7.9M.

Sotheby’s also had a distinguished re-discovery in the form of a Saint Sebastian by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). This canvas was probably painted in Rome around 1608 for the Spinola family of Genoa, but had spent most of the last 100 years in St Louis, Missouri, USA undetected. It had appeared at an auction there in 2008, catalogued as attributed to Laurent de la Hire (sic). With its new attribution, it sold for £4.9M.

The week of sales totalled well over £100M, the best result for 6 years with Christie’s evening sale generating £53.9M, while Sotheby’s came in at £39M. The day sales, of lesser fry, were much quieter with slightly higher BI rates. Sotheby’s sale totalled £911,000, Bonhams £1.35M and Christie’s just over £2M. On average, 70% of the lots offered found buyers on the day and more will have sold subsequently suggesting that although Old Masters are not as fashionable as contemporary paintings, there is still a market for them.