The Antiques Trade Gazette, reviews the London December Old Master Sales thus: “The latest Old Master auctions produced the highest total for a December sale for seven years”. This total was £59.2 million for the combined top sales of Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams, with two day sales still to go. I am not bothering with theses Day Sales, as we all know, the pictures don’t quicken the pulse, lesser fry are struggling to find buyers and it makes dull reading.

This overall success masks the fact that the love was not spread evenly. Bonhams Sale made a little over £600,000, Christie’s was 20 times the size at around £12 million, and Sotheby’s, at just under £31 million, was nearly three times the size of Christie’s.

Let’s take a look at these sales in detail and see if we can learn anything. We will begin with Sotheby’s and let gravity take us on a downward trajectory. There were only 30 lots in the evening sale and 7 of these did not find buyers on the day. The top price was paid by my old friend, Johnny Van Haeften, for a late Rembrandt of St. John on Patmos, which had not been on the market for 100 years. Freshness to the market is a significant plus when so many paintings are re-cycled on a regular basis. St John’s features are based on those of Rembrandt’s son Titus and despite being cut down on all sides and the victim of some harsh cleaning in the past, made £5.5 million hammer. Rembrandt is a household name and late works are in particularly short supply.

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn Saint John of Patmos

The next picture to catch my eye was the beautifully preserved triptych by The Master of the Sherborne Almshouse (see above). There is no other work known by this anonymous artist from Brussels active in the 1480s and 1490s. It had been in Sherborne since the early 16th Century and hidden during the dissolution of the monasteries. Its romantic history and pristine condition secured a price of £5.2 million hammer. It may be loaned back to Sherborne from time to time by the purchasers.

The Master of Sherborne A Triptych with the five miracles of Christ

The glamorous portrait of the Duke of Norfolk by Han Eworth (1520-1574) made £3.2 million and is going home after a long absence. He was bought by the current Duke of Norfolk!

Hans Eworth Portrait of Thomas Howard

Small Flemish landscapes had a tough evening and the three on offer all proved too old-fashioned to sell. Small flower pieces suffered the same fate.

I have always liked the large canvas by Turner of Venus and Adonis that Sotheby’s offered. I remember when Chrissy Gibbs, art dealer to the stars and friend of Mick Jagger’s had it 50 years ago and advertised it in Apollo. Unique in Turner’s oeuvre, as a straight mythological piece, I wondered if it may prove too esoteric for modern taste, but it took a healthy £762,000 with premiums.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. Venus and Adonis

Christie’s was an altogether thinner affair. Their star lot was a small oval panel of a flute player by Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), one of Rembrandt’s ablest assistants. This small oval had been enlarged into a rectangle with an arched top in the early 19th Century. Despite this alteration it made a very respectable £3.8 million.

Gerrit Dou The Flute Player

There was a most surprising oil painting of a storm at sea by Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828). Until this painting came up, I had never seen a romantic, imaginary scene by Bonington, just views of Venice, Lerici, the Normandy Coast and so on, painted with a verve and confidence that left Constable bemused. It had a splash of red in the sea, reminiscent of the scarlet buoy that Turner painted and Timothy Spall, playing the great man in the movie, scratches out with his thumbnail and reduces in size with a rag. This powerful little work made £889,000 with premiums. The Evening Sale contained 33 lots of which 12 failed on the night.

Richard Parkes Bonnington A Vessel in Distress

The Bonhams sale was more like what is euphemistically called a “mid-season sale”, in other words, those pictures not worthy of being held back for a summer or winter sale. These sales showed, once again, how difficult it is for the auction houses to secure consignments of fresh lots, by good hands, in an acceptable state of preservation, but when they do appear, they fly.

This is a footnote, make of it what you will. Christie’s offered a large and attractive landscape by Jan Wynants (1632-1684). It had a Rothschild provenance, every bit as good as being in a Royal Collection, and it sold for £825,000 against an estimate of £700,000 to £1,000,000. They mentioned that it had sold in July 1999, but omitted to say what it fetched. I remembered it and that it had made an astonishing £2.31 million, against an estimate of £200,000-300,000, which was a world record! Was this omission to avoid having to say as financial advisers must do: “Investments can go down as well as up”? It’s not very reassuring for investors to realise that some things can make a third of what you paid for them 25 years later. Caveat Emptor.

Jan Wijnants A Wooded Landscape with Figures

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.

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