Rediscovered works and a few flashy numbers dominated the headlines about this week’s summer Old Masters sales in London, but the auctions themselves were not without their disappointments. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s topped their pre-sale high estimates, but the totals were powered by great prices achieved by top paintings that were either important rediscoveries or reattributions, fresh to the market with distinguished provenance, or in great condition, while many more pedestrian works languished.

Christie's
At Christie’s evening sale on July 8, a rediscovered Watteau masterpiece elicited a hearty round of applause when it sold to London dealer Jean-Luc Baroni, who was standing in the back of the salesroom, for £12,361,250 (est: £3–5 million). The painting, La Surprise, was famous in its day but had been missing for some two hundred years before it was found in the corner of a drawing room in a British country house during a Christie’s valuation last year. It had belonged to Nicolas Hénin, one of Watteau’s closest friends, giving it “the best provenance a Watteau painting can have,” according to Paul Raison, director of Christie’s Old Master paintings department in London. The hammer price was an auction record for the artist as well as a record for a pre-Impressionist French painting.

Other notable lots included a painting of a rearing stallion by Anthony Van Dyck, which attracted three bidders at £1 million before selling for £3,065,250 (est. £1–1.5 million), an auction record for the artist. A Jacobean portrait of a lady, believed to be a depiction of Arabella Thornhagh by William Larkin, one of the foremost artists of his time, sold to London dealer Mark Weiss for £505,250 (est. £400–600,000); the work has been with the Thornhagh family since it was painted in 1617. A sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence of his mother, Lucy Lawrence, executed in the last year of her life, sold to New York dealer Henry Zimmet, director of French & Co., for £373,250 (est. £50–80,000). And The Bad Shepherd, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, depicting a shepherd running away as one of his flock is devoured by a wolf, fetched £2,505,250 (est. £1–1.5 million) from a telephone bidder; the underbidder was London dealer Johnny van Haeften.

Despite the high prices paid for these and other leading works, the sale was not a spectacular success. A third of the 48 lots offered failed to find buyers, including a 17th-century group portrait of the Carnarvon family by Peter Lely (est. £700,000–1 million) and an oil on copper painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder (est. £1.2–1.8 million). Nevertheless, thanks to the Watteau, the evening totaled £24,094,750 ($47,652,000), besting the pre-sale high estimate of £21,740,000.

The house’s day sale, on July 9, earned a total of £5,971,275. Although there was no single star lot, the sale attracted considerable interest for its inclusion of 30 paintings from the collection of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, none of which had been on the market since they were acquired in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the Lichtenstein pieces far surpassed pre-sale expectations, including a painting of a Madonna and Child with an Angel in a Landscape, attributed to the circle of Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci (il Perugino), which made £121,250 (est. £10–15,000), and a 15th-century Lombard School cassone panel, The Continence of Scipio, which brought £157,250 (est. £40–60,000).

Sotheby's
Sotheby’s evening sale on July 9 made £51,488,650 ($101,829,000), which is nicely above pre-sale expectations of £30–44.2 million and marks the second highest total for a single session of Old Masters at Sotheby’s worldwide. Of the 90 works offered, 69 found buyers — a sold rate of 76.2 percent by lot and 93 percent by value.  “The pictures were as good a group as we have had in a long time,” said Richard Charlton-Jones, senior director of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s, who cited both the high quality and the “vast array” of the offerings, which ranged from early Dutch portraits to 18th-century French baroque works.

The standout painting in the evening sale was Frans Halss charming Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen. Painted circa 1634–35, it depicts the Harlem merchant leaning back in his chair, a hunting crop curved between his hands. The work belonged to various members of the Rothschild family between 1865 and 1950, and, though originally believed to be a Hals, was eventually demoted by experts who thougt it a copy of a Hals that hangs today in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. The portrait spent time in collections in São Paolo and Vienna before resurfacing in a 2004 sale at Kinsky auction house in Vienna, where it went to a collector with a smart hunch for €440,000 ($700,000 today). It has since been cleaned, researched, and reauthenticated as a Hals (and the one in Brussels proven to be a copy). At Sotheby’s the work carried a pre-sale estimate of £3–5 million, but no one was surprised when it sold for £7,097,250, the second highest price paid for a work by the artist.

Also notable was J.M.W. Turners early oil painting Pope’s Villa at Twickenham (est. £5–7 million), billed by the house as one of the artist’s most important paintings to come to the market in living memory. First exhibited in 1808, the work has remained in the same private collection since 1827. However, the painting has a yellow cast — “Turner probably would have liked it even more yellow,” said George Gordon, co-chairman of Old Master Paintings Worldwide for Sotheby’s — and buyers typically prefer Turner’s later, color-drenched, impressionistic images. The painting sold for £5,417,250, just slightly its low estimate of £5 million.

Also off the market for a long time was a fine riverside village and harbor scene by Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Edge of a Village with Figures Dancing on the Bank of a River (est: £2.5–3.5 million). Dating from 1616, it has been in only three collections since 1730, including the Bavarian Royal Collection. The painting is notable for being one of only two known works by the artist that includes a self-portrait (he appears in the foreground wearing a black jacket with a white ruff). It sold for £3,513,250, a record for the artist.

Lucas Cranach the Elders David and Bathsheba also brought an extraordinary price, going to the English trade for £2,113,250, more than ten times its pre-sale high estimate of £200,000. The oil-on-limewood-panel painting was consigned by a European collection, where it has been since 1981.

The session also included 13 early Flemish and Dutch paintings from the Wetzlar Collection. Following Hans Wetzlars death in 1976, most of his collection was sold by Sotheby’s Amsterdam, but a few works were divided between his two daughters, one of whom consigned hers at Sotheby’s London. These included a 16th-century bust-length portrait by Jan Gossaert that depicts a soberly dressed woman whose agitated hands stand in contrast to the black background and her general sense of serenity. According to Charlton-Jones, such stark and dramatic portraits appeal both to contemporary art collectors (think Bacon and Freud) as well as to those who traditionally buy Old Masters. The work did well, earning £433,250 (est. £200–300,000).

The sale also included works that belonged to the late Gustav Rau, an eccentric collector and philanthropist who became a doctor at the age of 40, then moved to Africa, where he built a hospital in the Congo. Charlton-Jones remembers Rau flying to London from Africa wearing his bush clothes and buying very good paintings. The Rau pictures included a Tintoretto portrait of a bearded elderly man that sold for £1,609,250 (est: £200–300,000), an auction record for the artist.