Bullish Bidders

Pablo Picasso Titian Joan Miro Philips Wouwerman Edouard Vuillard Oskar Kokoschka Edgar Degas Claude Monet

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Did you hear the good news? Perhaps not, given the concert of lamentation currently performed on every musical instrument known to the media when the subject is economic prospects. Late in January and early February, the art market confirmed its fundamental strength through a series of sales in two radically different areas appealing to very distinct constituencies, first Old Masters and, a week later, Impressionist and modern art.

The short message is that good pictures still find takers across the board, and out-of-this-world rarities soar higher than ever. In a world in which luxury products are doing badly, this is remarkable.

To measure just how well the art market is performing, it is necessary to take a close look at the details in which the proverbial devil lies.

The Christie’s sale in New York on January 28 gave the first indication that Old Master paintings are pretty much as sought after as they were before the autumn financial troubles. The sensation of the day was Federico Barocci’s study on paper for the Head of Saint John the Evangelist in The Entombment of Christ, an altarpiece still in place in the church of Santa Croce, at Senigallia, Italy. Previously unrecorded, the sketch, admirable for its spontaneity, fascinated admirers of late 16th-century Mannerism.

The study carried a $400,000-to-$600,000 estimate plus the sale charge, which seemed huge for a work on paper (laid down on canvas) by an artist whose name means little to the wider public. But so intense was its appeal to connoisseurs that the Barocci shot up to $1.8 million at the end of a bidding match won by the international dealer Jean-Luc Baroni. While no other Old Master compared with that, the sale included another sketch in oil on paper, this time by a 19th-century master, that has the same kind of immediacy. The tiny view of the Salisbury plain done by John Constable in 1829 is more advanced than anything the Impressionists were to do half a century later. It exceeded the highest expectations as it brought a staggering $1.1 million.

More importantly, success extended far beyond extraordinary rarities.

Some paintings to which no name could be attached aroused as much interest as they might have done at the height of the market. Early in the sale, a powerful portrait presented one of those enigmas that keep art historians speculating forever. The painting was attributed to the "Circle of Jean Fouquet," which, in plain English, means that the Christie’s specialists noticed a connection with the 15th-century French master’s style, but did not think the panel portraying a ruler of the small kingdom of Navarre dated 1471 is actually his work. Christie’s hoped that it might sell for $30,000 to $50,000, plus the sale charge. Instead the portrait, surprising for its intense psychological probe, realized $206,500.

Later, another intriguing painting came up. Christie’s did not even bother to speculate about the identity of the artist working in a Caravaggesque style. The mythological scene featuring The Drunken Silenus was described as the work of "a northern artist alive in Rome, circa 1625." Its harsh subject makes it hard to sell — a man facing the viewer screams in anger as he tries to steady the balding drunkard who has thrown his arms around his shoulders, while an evil-looking satyr sniggers at them both. Anonymous works of this ilk find takers when bidders have their own idea regarding their authorship. The price, $74,500, suggests that on January 28, one connoisseur definitely had a hunch.

Therein resides part of the appeal of Old Masters, a category in which many unsigned pictures leave the door open to inspired guesswork.

Indeed, shortly afterward, there came a chance to make a small coup. A landscape with a rider standing by his horse was simply "attributed to Philips Wouwerman." In auction house conventional language, this means that the experts think that the picture just might be, with luck, by the artist. In fact, the composition of the wide-open landscape, with its delicate atmospheric handling of the sky, is typical of Wouwerman’s art. The experts’ reservations may be due to a certain fuzziness in the detail caused by wear. But the Wouwerman, which has a glamorous provenance (in the 18th century it belonged to the duc de Choiseul-Praslin, a famous French collector) still retains the Louis XIV giltwood frame that was clearly made for it. Whoever bought that for $25,000 got himself/herself a genuine, if imperfectly preserved, Wouwerman in a frame that is worth on its own $30,000 to $40,000.

Later, there was an opportunity to make a greater coup, and here, there was no need for clever expertise. A good eye for beauty was enough. The Madonna and Child painted by Simon Vouet was already admired in the 17th century, as may be inferred from a 1638 engraving that reproduces it. It is one of the French artist’s great masterpieces. The light that falls on the young woman’s face and her adoring yet wistful gaze as she contemplates the infant combine to make it unforgettable. Sold within the estimated bracket, the picture was nevertheless a steal at $158,500. Vouet’s work hardly ever comes up at auction. Indeed, what made the coup possible is the very rarity of his oeuvre, not to be seen anywhere in large numbers. The gem effectively slipped under the radar of most viewers.

Nothing of the kind happened when it came to the two or three outstanding pictures by masters that constantly remain in the public eye.

An exquisite view of a Flemish town under snow painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger in the late 16th century, The Bird Trap, estimated to be worth $300,000 to $500,000, did better than that as it climbed to $674,500.

A day later Sotheby’s demonstrated the bullishness of the market with a markedly superior sale that took off immediately. A tiny panel by Lorenzo Monaco was the first great catch. The Magus Hermogenes Casting His Magic Books into the Water was originally part of a predella at the base of an altarpiece commissioned in 1387 or 1388. Its boldness appeals to the modern eye, and most of Monaco’s paintings are locked up in churches and museums. Magus Hermogenes climbed to $1.4 million.

The next gem was a profoundly poetic flight into Egypt set in a river landscape, done in the 1620s by the Antwerp master Maerten Ryckaert interpreting an original by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Determined to get it, Johnny Van Haeften, the European leader in Dutch and Flemish art, sent it flying to $698,500, surpassing the high estimate of $500,000.

The ultimate prize of the week was yet to come. The likeness of a Bagpipe Player in Profile, 1624 by Hendrick Ter Brugghen is the kind of major painting by a famous master that normally no longer comes up at auction. This one was returned last year to the heirs of Herbert von Klemperer, an opponent to the Nazi regime, whose painting was dispatched in 1938 to a forced sale. The Sotheby’s estimate, $4 million to $6 million, did not take into account the psychological impact that the unexpected return to the market of a museum rarity has on potential buyers. Van Haeften had told me before the sale that he would try for it, but even he did not expect that he would end up paying $10.2 million, an auction record for the artist.

At that point, the financial tempest raging out in the big world seemed to have been forgotten. A return to reality came with the second big star lot of the evening. The matching likenesses of a Dutch burgher and his wife portrayed by Frans Hals in 1637 are the last such pair by the Haarlem school master still in private hands. But $15 million to $21 million is a gigantic estimate for portraits that lack the rasping edge of Hals at his greatest. These hardly qualified as the kind of opportunity to be pounced upon at any cost, and they crashed unwanted. Other glitches were likewise due to over-optimistic estimation. Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, now considered to be by Titian, is too gruesome, with its matron exhibiting the martyr’s head in a platter, to appeal to many buyers. Nor is it sufficiently established as an undisputed Titian for museums to want it — when last offered at auction, at Christie’s London on December 9, 1994, it was still catalogued as "studio work."

On the whole, though, the sale went well. No truly great picture was ignored. A marvelous, highly original still life with a glass of beer and smoking implements by the little-known and rare 17th-century Amsterdam artist Jan van de Velde thus brought $842,500, and some indifferent works, such as a sentimental Annunciation by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, sold without a hitch. At $362,500, the Procaccini could hardly have fared better. The seemingly ominous casualty rate, 46 percent, merely reflected the difficulty of finding good paintings. Now that the Old Master paintings market has returned to its natural constituency, the connoisseurs, many mediocrities drop dead because nobody wants them, while any misjudgments by the auction-house experts in assessing beauty or quality is fatal.

That left a question mark hovering over the sales of Impressionist and modern art due a week later in London. Sotheby’s came first, on February 3, with very modest works, and disaster seemed imminent. This, however, was not the case.

The two star lots gracefully lived up to expectations. In fact, the first of the two set a world record.

The bronze figure of a ballet dancer graced with the aura of Degas, who molded the original wax model in 1879-81, was cast after the artist’s death. Legally authentic because the job was done by permission of the copyright owners, it is one of 27 specimens executed between 1922 and 1937. The estimate, £9 million to £12 million ($13-17 million), seemed staggering to those who remembered the world record £5 million (then $9.2 million) that its consignor had paid on February 3, 2004. But bronze casts of the Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, as the figure is now called, are prominently displayed in world-famous museums such as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Although the bronze figure that Degas never touched with his hands is, in artistic terms, a copy, it was treated as a fetish imbued with the dead artist’s spirit, and a rare fetish at that: Few remain outside museums. At £13.3 million ($18.8 million), it retained its position as the most expensive sculpture ever associated with the Degas name.

The success of the second star lot, which was less ambitious, says even more about the vigor of the art market. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street Scene of 1914, while typical of the German Expressionist’s work, is hardly unforgettable. The ease with which it realized £5.4 million ($7.7 million) says a lot about the ongoing eagerness of the market for solid works of art within their own range.

More interestingly still, pictures carried by current trends can greatly exceed estimates. Joan Miró’s Femmes et oiseaux dans la nuit, a 1968 cartoon-like composition combining quasi-abstractionism and strident Expressionism, doubled the high estimate as it brought £2 million ($2.9 million).

The strength of the market was further underlined by the success of several modest paintings. A View of Istanbul, 1929 by Oskar Kokoschka sold for £1.5 million ($2.1 million) even though the painter’s attempt to give an impression of topographical detail merely results in confusion.

As with the Old Masters, there was one bargain for connoisseurs. A Paris view of the late 1890s by Pierre Bonnard shows a trawler chugging away on the river as tiny horse carriages standing out against the sky cross a bridge farther away. The masterpiece in toned shades of gray was grabbed by a French collector bidding against the reserve. It was well worth the £301,250 ($430,700) that it cost. Altogether, Sotheby’s came out of the test much better than expected, with 22 out of 29 works selling for a total of £32.6 million ($46.7 million).

Christie’s, which took over with an incomparably better sale, confirmed on February 4 the trends noted at Sotheby’s. Of its 47 lots, 39 added up to £63.4 million ($91.2 million).

Buyers were unhesitatingly bullish, right from lot one, a virtually abstract sculpture carved by Henri Laurens in 1919 in his Cubist style. Femme à la guitare swiftly climbed to £713,250 ($1 million), nearly 50 percent above the high estimate. Freestanding stone figures by Laurens rarely turn up at auction, and he is actively being promoted as a substitute for the vanishing major masters of early 20th-century avant-garde sculpture.

Immediately after, four portraits of prostitutes done by Kees van Dongen following the end of his Fauve period around 1906 sold in a row. The strongest, Femme aux deux colliers, possibly dating from 1910, rose to £1.3 million, followed by Cuirasse d’or, which verges on banality with its sexually provocative posture but nevertheless made £2.9 million ($4.2 million).

This, however, was nothing compared with the extraordinary £5.1 million ($7.3 million) paid for Edouard Vuillard’s Les Couturières. If truly done in 1890, as Christie’s wrote, the lack of any detail in the close-up view of two seamstresses cutting or sewing a red fabric means that it was left unfinished. The presence of a stamp supplied by the artist’s estate proves that it was still in his studio at his death, in 1940, thus backing the assumption. Christie’s had secured a bid on its books, probably an irrevocable one, judging from the conventional symbol and the lack of any bid from the room, and that saw the painting through. Obtaining such a bid in the gloomy atmosphere that reigned in January is itself proof of the feverish yearning that prevails in the market for anything that looks important.

True, one work fell far short of expectations. Monet’s Dans la prairie, an 1876 painting of a woman reading in a field, half-concealed by wildflowers swaying in the light summer breeze, would have been a pure enchantment but for one detail. Her mean, mulish expression spoils it, and at a flat £15 million, the estimate quoted on request (only in sterling) before the sale, it could have failed. The auctioneer let it go on a £10 million bid that still brought the full price to £11.2 million ($16.2 million).

This easily amounts to a 50 percent drop in buying-power terms when compared with the £14.3 million ($20.4 million) that the Monet cost at Sotheby’s London on June 28, 1988, and it is at least 25 percent less than the $15.4 million paid at Sotheby’s New York on November 11, 1999, but it is still a huge amount for a picture slightly marred by an aesthetic imperfection.

This relentless shrinking in value, unrelated to financial troubles, reflects the gradual decline of early Impressionism, in large part because its great masterpieces now all grace museums, and to some extent because its lighthearted mood no longer appeals to a public attuned to the brutal impact of Expressionism, Surrealism, or 20th-century cartoon-style works in the manner of the late Picassos.

Considering the change in taste over the past two decades, and the flaw that the subject’s unappealing face represents, the $16 million paid this year for Dans la prairie remains phenomenal. It proves that big money continues to flow in the art market. What is in short supply is great art, and that is the real problem with which auction houses will have to cope in coming years.

Souren Melikian is the international editor of Art+Auction. "Bullish Bidders" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2009 Table of Contents.