Russian Art Passes First Test of the Season at Sotheby’s

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky Boris Grigoriev Nikolai Konstantinovitch Roerich NYC Police Seek Help Recovering Stolen Paintings Russian Art Finds More Success at Christie’s Russian Art Market to Face First Big Test of 2009 London: Russian Paintings Few Bright Spots at Russian Art Sales in London

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Of the 308 lots on offer, 200 found buyers, while 108 did not, for sold rates of 64.9 percent by lot and 71.8 percent by value. On the bright side, over 93 percent of the lots that did sell went for prices at or above their estimates, which may be a good sign for tomorrow’s equivalent sale at rival auction house Christie’s.

“We are very excited and encouraged by the results of today’s sale,” said Sotheby’s Russian art experts Sonya Bekkerman and Gerard Hill in a statement. “It was the first test of the season and we saw a great depth of bidding across a number of different collecting areas.”

In the morning session, dedicated to paintings, the wow moment came early, as lot 8, Ivan Aivazovsky’s Columbus Sailing from Palos, the top earner of the day, raked in $1,594,500, just above its high estimate of $1.5 million.

In the afternoon session, dedicated to icons and decorative arts, murmurs rippled through the room as a bidding war ensued for a lot titled "An extremely rare Russian gilded silver and shaded enamel pictorial punch bowl and ladle" by Fabergé’s regular supplier Feodor Rückert. Paddle 218 triumphed, snagging the work for $482,500, more than double its high estimate of $200,000.

But the day’s greatest enthusiasm may have been when a man in the back of the room outbid others for a Veneto-Cretan icon of the Mother Of God, causing his friend to scream out “All right, bravo!” and sending waves of laughter through the room.

“If everyone were as happy as that,” auctioneer Henry Howard-Sneyd chimed in.

But some buyers probably were. Boris Grigoriev’s two-panel painting Preparing Crepes: A Pair sold for $1,258,500, well above the high expectation of $700,000. The work had hung for decades in Giovanni, a French restaurant in New York popular with Russian émigrés, as well as artists and socialites such as Ernest Hemingway and Ingrid Bergman. Originally a single canvas, it was cut in two and partially repainted because Giovanni Pramaggiore, the restaurant’s owner and the painting’s subject, considered the giant portrait to be of an immodest size.

Samurai, a sanguine and charcoal drawing mounted on board by Alexandre Iacovleff, established a new record for a work on paper by the artist, garnering $602,500, more than four times the high estimate of $125,000.

Three paintings by Nicholas Roerich, a 20th-century artist who explored nature and spirituality both in his work and in his life and whose work fills a museum on New York's Upper West Side, were among the top-ten lots of the day: Secret of the Walls sold for $530,500, beating the high estimate of $200,000; Mohegan, Maine (Hope) brought in $434,500, better than the high estimate of $350,000; and Mystery, which sold for $362,500, within its predicted range of $300–500,000.

Bekkerman and Hill believe yesterday’s auction bears well for the future. “If you consider these results alongside the more than $12 million we achieved for Russian works in last November’s Impressionist and Modern sales in New York, and the nearly $38 million brought in in London in December, it’s clear that the market for Russian art remains buoyant.”