Temperamental Old Masters

LONDON—The summer Old Master Paintings sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London, on July 4 and July 5, respectively, had mixed results. While several star lots fetched spectacular prices, many others languished, victims of overly optimistic pre-sale estimates.  

At Sotheby’s evening sale of 55 lots on July 4, three paintings described by the auction house as “masterpieces” coming from a single private collection were offered, but only one found a buyer. Diego Velazquez’s Saint Rufina (lot #59, est: £6-8 million) was the evening’s top lot, selling for £8,420,000 ($17,003,348), a record both for the artist and for a Spanish painting sold at auction. The buyer was the Focus-Abengoa Foundation from Seville, whose director said the painting would return to the city (the painter’s birthplace, and the city of which Saint Rufina is patron saint) to be part of a new center to house works by Velazquez. The painting was last seen at auction at Christie’s New York in 1999, when it sold for $8.9 million.  

Failing to sell, on the other hand, was Jean-Honore Fragonard’s modello for his famous painting La Verrou (1778, lot #70), a depiction of a couple ardently embracing. Estimated at £5-8 million, the painting was bought in at £4.6 million. The work was last up for auction at Christie’s Akram Ojjeh sale in London in 1999, when it went for £5.28 million, then as now the record for the artist. Some consider this price—upon which Sotheby’s estimate for La Verrou was based—to be too high.

The third “masterpiece” from the private collection was also a casualty. George Stubbs’s 1769 painting Stallion and Mare (lot #45, est: £2-3 million) was not particularly attractive and was bought in just under its low estimate.

More successful was Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Aeneas and the Sybil in the Underworld (lot #20, est. £2-3 million), a depiction of hell that was unrecorded until 2001 and was the only known example of the artist’s hell scenes remaining in private hands. It sold to the London trade just below estimate for £1,924,000, but still set an auction record for the artist.

Also of interest was a beautiful portrait of a young woman by an unknown artist of the South Netherlandish School (lot #15); the work soared over its £50-70,000 pre-sale estimate, selling to an American collector for £804,000.

After the Velazquez and the Brueghel, Jan Havicksz. Steen’s A Terrace with a Couple Dancing to a Pipe and Fiddle (£1,700,000, est. £2-3 million), Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne’s Winter Landscape with Figures Skating on a Frozen River (£1,308,000, est. £400,000-600,000), and Claude-Joseph Vernet’s A Mediterranean Harbour Scene at Sunset (£1,028,000, est. £400,000-600,000) rounded out the night’s top five lots.

Christie’s
The star of Christie’s Old Master paintings evening sale on July 5—and, in fact, of the entire week—was a stunning portrait by Raphael of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence (1492-1519) that sold for £18,500,000 ($37,277,500, est. £10-15 million), a record for a work by the Renaissance master. The painting was consigned by New York dealer Ira Spanierman, who paid $328 for it in 1968, three years before it was identified as a lost Raphael. Richard Knight, International Director of Christie’s Old Master Paintings department, said that he “had never thought he would sell a Raphael in his lifetime,” adding that the picture had not been seen in 40 years and had a superb provenance, blending history and politics. Christie’s gave no indication as to the identity of the buyer, a private collector bidding over the telephone, other than to say that he or she was not a Russian.

Auction records were also rewritten for Il Domenichino, whose painting The Pieta sold to dealer Otto Naumann for £3,044,000 (lot #40, est. £2,500,000-3,500,000); Lucas Cranach II, whose three-quarter portrait of a lady in an elaborate green and orange dress (lot #48) went to the London trade for £1,812,000 (est. £500,000-700,000); and Ferdinand Bol, whose Venus and Cupid (lot # 56) sold to a London dealer for £994,400, high above a pre-sale estimate of £100,000-150,000.

A major painting by Sir Peter Lely (lot # 57), a nude portrait of one of King Charles II’s mistresses—either Barbara Villiers or Nell Gwyn, and most likely the former—went unsold during the session, but found a buyer immediately after. It sold within its estimate of £1,500,000-2,000,000.

After the Raphael, Il Domenichino, and Cranach, Jacob Jordaen’s The Revel of Bacchus and Silenus (£1,700,000, est. £500,000-800,000) and Sir Thomas Lawrence’s “The Woodland Maid”: Portrait of Miss Emily de Visme (1787-1873) (£1,196,000, est. £800,000-1,200,000) completed the night’s top five lots.

Lifeless Still Lifes
At both sales, floral still-life paintings lacked their usual appeal. At Sotheby’s two examples by Abraham Mignon, lot #41 (est. £1,000,000-1,500,000), which was guaranteed by the auction house, and lot #43 (est. £600,000-800,000) went unsold.

Christie’s had an unusual number of still lifes by such artists as Balthasar van der Ast, Jan van Os, and Jacob Van Hulsdonck. Most went unsold. The exception was a beautiful example by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (lot #70, est. £600,000-800,000), which was purchased by an American collector for £1,005,000.