Old Master Paintings

Christie's

Lucas Cranach the Elder's "Portrait of Princess Sybille of Cleves" (1526-27) (est. $4-6 million) fetched $7,657,000, his second-highest price at auction.

Christie's

A record for Cornelis van Haarlem was set when "Hercules and Achelous" (1590) (est. $1.5-2 million) sold for $8,105,000.

Christie's
Important Old Master Paintings
227 lots offered
$48,071,925 sold total
16 percent unsold by value
32 percent unsold by lot

Francis Bacon Cornelis van Haarlem Cornelisz Cornelis van Haarlem Cornelisz Lucas Cranach the Elder Jacques-Louis David Thomas Gainsborough Orazio Gentileschi Guercino

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Van Haarlem’s Hercules and Achelous, from 1590, a dramatic mythological scene of the hero in a lion skin fighting a colossal bull (est. $1.5–2 million), achieved the highest price, $8,105,000. Nicholas Hall, the international director of Christie’s Old Master department, would identify the buyer only as “a European client from our contemporary department,” fueling rumors that contemporary-art collectors and creators, including Jeff Koons and John Currin, are entering the Old Masters field. “I’d call it a minitrend,” says Hall, who notes that the same buyer also purchased Nicolas Poussin’s Jupiter and Antiope, from the mid to late 1620s (est. $300–500,000), for $959,400.

The price brought by the 75 5/8-by-96-inch Hercules “is high for a northern Mannerist picture, but it’s minimal for anybody in the contemporary market,” says the New York dealer Richard Feigen. “It’s bizarre enough to be sexy for a contemporary collector. You could stick it with Francis Bacon or with some of these younger people, and it would work, because it’s so crazy.”

Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Portrait of Princess Sybille of Cleves, a graceful depiction from 1526–27 of the 14-year-old future bride of the elector of Saxony (est. $4–6 million), brought $7,657,000, the second-highest price both of the sale and for this artist at auction. The painting was consigned by the heirs of Arthur Houghton, the founder of Corning Glass Works. According to Christie’s, the buyer was Russian.

David’s 1820 Portrait of Ramel de Nogaret (est. $4–6 million) fetched $7,209,000, a strong price for a work produced in Brussels, as French buyers and other purists tend to prefer those the artist made in France. The picture’s mate, Portrait of Madame Ramel de Nogaret, carried a lower estimate ($1.5–2 million), a common fate for female, versus male, portraits. Madame de Nogaret failed to draw a single bid once its $1.7 million reserve was announced, but the buyer of Ramel de Nogaret purchased it privately afterward.

Among the sale’s few surprises was the $2,953,000 achieved by van de Velde’s festive genre scene An Elegant Company in a Garden, from 1614 (est. $700–900,000), which had been in the collection of the Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring and was returned to the Dutch consignor after World War II. The van Haarlem was also restituted, although it had been looted by the East German secret police in the mid-1980s. The painting was taken in lieu of payment for a tax bill its owners could not afford and placed in the Bode Museum, in East Berlin. After reunification, it was moved to the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin’s museum for Old Masters and, in November 2007, handed back to the family in recognition of its illegal seizure. According to Hall, there was no competition over the picture between the two top auction houses. “A descendant of the family just walked into Christie’s in Berlin and dealt with us from the beginning,” he says.

More consignments could be coming from victims of Stasi theft, says Ulf Bischof, a lawyer in Berlin who represents claimants of works looted by the East Germans. In the 1970s and 1980s, the secret police confiscated collections of some 20 families a year to sell abroad for hard currency.

Despite the records set, the auction contained some signs of softness in the market. Orazio Gentileschi’s The Stigmatization of Saint Francis, circa 1600–01, in which Francis of Assisi is held up by an angel after being pierced with the wounds of Christ, failed to sell, as bidding stopped at $1.5 million, half a million dollars below the low estimate. Seven lots later, a 1631 Guercino painting of Saint Luke reading from his Gospel (est. $300–500,000) was bought in at $150,000. Both pictures were consigned by Feigen. He and others blame their weak showing on the absence of Italian dealers, the natural audience for such works. Hall, however, insists that some Italians were indeed present in the room