On the Market: Russian Art Soars at Auction

NEW YORK—Sotheby’s four-session sale of 515 lots of Russian art on April 16 and 17 was a huge success, earning over $50 million with 86 percent of the lots being sold by value. The total, which was above the high estimate, was just shy of the record set last April, although this sale had 200 fewer lots.

According to Sonya Bekkerman, one of Sotheby’s experts in Russian paintings and decorative works of art, the consignors of the works were American, but the buyers were 80 percent Russian. Lauren Gioia, a spokesperson for Christie’s, agreed. “Russian was definitely the language of choice in the salesroom,” she said.

Mikhail Nesterov’s Vision of St. Sergius, When a Child, (1922), considered to be the artist’s most important painting and the inaugural work of the Russian Symbolist movement, was the auction’s prize lot. Three bidders competed for the piece, which was sold for $4,296,000 (est: $2-3 million), an auction record for the artist. Several other artists also set records, among them, Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky, whose Happy Arcadia, (1889-90) one of 16 allegorical and mythological canvases that he painted for the concert hall of Baron Sergei Pavlovich von Derviz’s St. Petersburg mansion, sold for $3.4 million (est: $800,000-1 million). Alexei Harlamoff’s Young Flower Girls (1895) soared to a record $3,176,000 against a pre-sale estimate of $700-900,000.

It wouldn’t be a Russian art auction without Fabergé. The auction featured a rare gold and enamel miniature chair (1899-1903) by workmaster Michael Perchin of St. Petersburg. This tiny 2 ¼ inch object fetched the rather large sum of $2,280,000.

One day after the Sotheby’s sale ended, it was Christie’s turn. On April 18, the auction house’s second New York sale of Russian art featured 331 Russian paintings and works of art and earned a total of $19,265,160, over $10 million more than the previous year’s auction. The top lot was an Orientalist painting by Vasily Vereshchagin, entitled Solomon’s Wall (1884-85), which set a record for the artist when it sold to a Russian collector for $3,624,000 (est: $3-5 million). It might have fetched even more had the painting had a Russian theme, which Russian buyers prefer.

Two Fabergé lots were the stars of the works of art section. A rare carved carnelian figure of a gnome mounted as a perfume flask may have looked kitschy to Western eyes, but it caught the attention of several bidders and fetched $1,384,000, well over its top estimate of $350,000. A more traditional Fabergé, a jewel-, gold- and guilloche-enamel-covered box decorated with a scene of the Narva Triumphal Gate, sold to a Russian collector for $992,200 (est: $150-250,000).

The growth of the Russian art market has been nothing short of phenomenal. In 2001, Sotheby’s sales worldwide in Russian art were $6.9 million. In 2006, the figure was $153.6 million.

Both houses will hold major Russian art sales in London in June.