Old Masters

NEW YORK—Sotheby’s sale of Old Master paintings and sculpture on January 24 demonstrated that neither financial woes nor fears of more to come have fatally hurt this market—at least, not yet.

The sale brought in a total of more than $82 million, although just 62 percent of the 246 lots sold. Downplaying the high buy-in rate, George Wachter, cochairman of Old Master paintings worldwide, points to the number of works that outperformed expectations and notes that earlier in the week, stock markets around the globe had “plunged and interest rates were lowered in the U.S. It was scary.”

Topping the auction’s successes was a graceful carving by the late medieval German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. The circa 1505 lime-wood figure of Saint Catherine (est. $4–6 million), fetched $6,313,000, an auction record for the artist.

Another sculpture brought the sale’s second-highest price, also an artist record. Five bidders fought over the San Felice Madonna, a gilded and painted terracotta relief of the Virgin and Child by Donatello. A phone bidder won it for $5,641,000, well above the high estimate of $4 million. New York dealer Richard Feigen reports that one of his clients had sought the relief but lowered his offering price (and lost the prize) after stocks dropped. In general, however, he thinks Old Master buyers are less sensitive to changes in worldwide markets than are collectors of contemporary art.

An exquisite work by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of a Lady Holding Grapes and Apples, more than doubled its high estimate of $2 million to fetch $5,081,000. A second Cranach, the 1530 Phyllis and Aristotle (est. $2.5–3.5 million), also surpassed expectations, making $4,073,000.

Prices overwhelmed some dealers, including Robert Simon, of New York, who stopped bidding on two lots—one for a private client, another for a museum—when numbers soared beyond what he deemed reasonable resale value. “There were some surprisingly high numbers,” he says.

The price levels reflect activity among collectors rather than among those in the trade, according to Wachter. “The dealers were very focused on things that they wanted—it wasn’t as if there was play money going around. Among the privates bidding, it was very exciting to see some young people coming into our market. I didn’t see a tremendous fear among private buyers.”

Still, bidders stopped short of buying Tintoretto’s 8-by-11-foot ceiling painting Allegory of Music (est. $2–3 million), a circa 1558 composition of four women in flowing robes, with trompe l’oeil balustrades around the edges. “You have a great Tintoretto ceiling,” explains Wachter, “but you have to have someone who is able to put it somewhere.”

Another unwieldy work was Mattia Preti’s monumental David Playing the Harp Before Saul, circa 1670 (est. $2–3 mil­lion), consigned by Feigen. He lowered the reserve the morning of the sale, at Wachter’s suggestion, since bidders knew the seller was a dealer. A private collector won it for a bargain $2,169,000. “I thought the painting was very cheap,” says Feigen wistfully. “The Old Master prices don’t make any sense when you compare them to other things in the art market.” He notes that he sold the work “sooner rather than later” for fear that prices might drop.

Wachter, rather than offer predictions, looks back to the last art market bust. “Three years after the stock market crashed in 1987, when the art market fell apart in July 1990, Old Masters for the most part kept making good prices,” he recalls. “The Italian market, in particular, was booming, whereas you had tremendous trouble finding a contemporary or Impressionist painting to sell. Old Masters kept their buoyancy. Just fewer came to the market.”

Wachter points to an encouraging sign this time around: optimism among sellers. “A tremendous amount of stuff came in at the last minute,” he says. “It added $10 million or $12 million to our total.” That might indicate opportunism rather than optimism.

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