NEW YORK—Old Master dealers are hoping they can enliven their niche market Stateside with the second edition of Master Drawings New York. The event—organized by Margot Gordon Fine Art, of Manhattan, and London’s Crispian Riley-Smith, who together run Master Drawings London in July—is being held January 18 through 26 at 16 galleries concentrated on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The timing was no doubt intended to coincide with the annual sales of Old Master drawings at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, on the 23rd and 24th of the month, respectively. Of Sotheby’s two Old Master auctions this season, the standout is its single-owner sale of 106 Italian drawings from the collection of Boston investor Jeffrey Horvitz, estimated to fetch $4.5 million to $6.5 million. Cognoscenti are eyeing Lelio Orsi?s mythological scene from 1544, Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Sun (est. $200–300,000). Among the more than 100 lots at Christie’s is a nude figure by François Boucher, a delicate study for the 1751 painting Venus Consoling Cupid, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (est. $200–$300,000). Another Boucher work, the Adoration of the Magi, is at Stiebel Ltd., a participant in Master Drawings New York. Also on the market are once-maligned, now-coveted Orientalist works, like Jean-Baptiste Hilaire?s 1788 Portrait of Sultan Abdul Hamid (est. $150–200,000), at Christie’s, and at Dickinson, in Master Drawings New York, Sir David Wilkie?s 1840 Portrait of the Infant Daughter of Admiral Walker, Commander of the Turkish Fleet. 

"Master Pieces" originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's January 2008 Table of Contents.