Courtesy Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York

Richard Feigen

Courtesy Richard L. Feigen & Co.

Hendrick Goltzius, "Vulcan" (1615)

Titian Giovanni Bellini Hendrik Goltzius Sir Thomas Lawrence Hendrick Terbrugghen Francois Andre Vincent Navigating a Shrinking Art Market Fall Museum Shows in Paris

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What was your top sale of the season?

We sold the recently rediscovered François-André Vincent history painting of a heroic Roman subject, Arria and Poetus, 1784, to the St. Louis Museum of Art in the million-dollar range. We had about three other museums interested in it.

What was the big success of the season?

The restituted Terbrugghen Bagpipe Player in Profile, 1624, which sold for $10.1 million. I was the underbidder on behalf of the National Gallery, and after the sale I suggested that the museum contact Johnny Van Haeften, who had the winning bid, to buy the picture, and it did.

What is your best picture still unsold?

We have two contenders: Hendrick Goltzius’s Vulcan, 1615, in the $400,000 range, and Sir Thomas Lawrence’s Portrait of Thomas Dawson, circa 1789, in the $700,000 range. Things don’t always have to be expensive to be great, and being expensive does not make them great.

Is there a work in a museum that you’d like to live with?

Giovanni Bellini’s Saint Francis in the Desert, circa 1480, which is in New York at the Frick Collection, and Titian’s Europa, 1560-62, now at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston.

"Richard Feigen" originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2009 Table of Contents.