The Gems I Would Have Taken Home

Claude Monet Jan van de Capelle Aelbert Cuyp Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp Anthonie de Lorme Season Opens Softly at Christie’s The Purveyor of Modern Life Also This Month

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The field of collecting keeps narrowing down as art supplies from the past irrevocably dwindle in proportion to ever-soaring interest in art.

Old Masters remain the one area where marvelous coups can be made by those who love painting and have an eye that recognizes masterpieces, even if these are not flagged by famous signatures.

In contrast to Impressionist and modern art, only a small minority of the countless painters from past centuries have been studied in depth, and, among these, an even smaller minority have had their oeuvres recorded in catalogues raisonnés.

Newly discovered pictures pop up all the time, overlooked in the dark corners of rarely visited European mansions or passed on from generation to generation in families not particularly versed in art who had never thought of submitting them to an expert.

Artists who never made it to world fame sometimes produced masterpieces, and these can be acquired at prices that still seem astonishingly low.

At the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), held as usual in the southern Netherlands city of Maastricht during the second week of March, two paintings by Anthonie de Lorme leapt off the walls on the stands of two London dealers, who, by sheer coincidence, have galleries within 50 yards of each other. If de Lorme had not signed much of his work, art historians would dub him the Master of the Mystery Churches. The Rotterdam artist painted countless interiors of ecclesiastical buildings in the sober classical style of the 1620s and 1630s. Partly bathed in beautiful light surging from invisible sources that leave large pockets of shadow, they invariably have side galleries in a slanting perspective, with characters in the distance enigmatically engaged in purposeful dialogue or steeped in contemplation of sights unseen. One very large church interior of dazzling beauty was offered by dealer Johnny Van Haeften at just under $800,000. I would have settled for it like a shot if money were no object. It was not even expensive — think of the miserable daub that this kind of money would secure in Impressionist and modern art.

With or without lots of money, I would have made a dash for a small, exquisite view done by de Lorme that was displayed by Rafaël Valls. The price, about $25,000, was a joke. I would also have gone for the portrait of a young girl signed in 1636 by Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, the father of the famous Aelbert Cuyp. The sitter stares, wide-eyed, with a mix of innocence and soft distress that places the likeness among the great psychological studies of Dutch portraiture. Unsurprisingly, the Jacob Cuyp was featured in a retrospective held at the Dordrecht Museum in the summer of 2002. The asking price? A laughable €38,000 ($50,000). One hears that the museum reserved it, which is only natural as Dordrecht was the artist’s hometown. Sadly, it could not muster the funds. Perhaps they should have begging bowls at the door.

If international museum directors might be inclined to dismiss Cuyp’s portrait as not important enough, they would hesitate to make such a pronouncement about a sublime picture of the Dutch school offered at Maastricht. The seaside view by Jan van de Cappelle, arguably the greatest marine painter in 17th-century Europe, is unusual for the Amsterdam master, who is most admired for his aptitude at catching the magic of hazy sunlight over quiet waters. Here, two sailing boats in a calm are reflected in the mirror-like surface of the water, while heavy black clouds hanging over the sea create a threatening atmosphere.

Van Haeften’s asking price was just over €1 million ($1.32 million). You would expect major world institutions looking for a masterpiece in impeccable condition by a towering figure of Dutch painting in the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer to have pounced on the van de Cappelle. They did not, making one wonder, as so often, just how their buying policies are determined. Too late. The van de Cappelle, which was under negotiation to a collector at the time of this writing, would have been my first choice in Old Masters anywhere this season.

Temptations are becoming rare in Old Master drawings, once available in the thousands and now reduced to a few pickings, mostly of an indifferent kind. One enchanting sketch by Jan van Goyen caught my eye on the stand of William Noortman at Maastricht. Characters drawn from life with a sense of fun gave a very different glimpse into the oeuvre of the 17th-century Dutch master of riverside landscapes. The €18,000 ($24,000) price tag would have seemed extravagant three decades ago. As the market now stands, it was modest. The drawing was sold at the private viewing on March 12.

While it is still possible to form consistent collections of masterpieces in Old Masters, barring celebrities, this is no longer true in Impressionist and modern art, which has been relentlessly pursued for the last four decades, leaving only scattered remains in private hands. Art lovers who only wish to live with one or two very beautiful paintings can still do it, if they look sharply enough.

In the New York May sales, so thin on desirable Impressionist art, one ravishing Monet, Voilier sur le petit bras de la Seine, Argenteuil, miraculously stood out at Sotheby’s. Its delicate greyish-green, amber and very pale blue hues conveyed the cool, hazy atmosphere of an early spring day along the river Seine. The picture was painted in 1872. This is the crucial year when Monet produced his famous "Impression" of a rising sun, to which Impressionism owes its name, coined soon after by a French art critic. It once formed part of the legendary Horace Havemeyer collection. The modest estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million, plus the sale charge, reflected the experts’ awareness that the subtle touches of Impressionism in its emerging phase are now lost on many of our contemporaries who prefer works with an instant punch. The Monet realized $3.49 million, a price that was still astonishingly reasonable at that level of quality.

For those who want to collect masterpieces on a truly large scale, Chinese art is the most rewarding, not to say the only hunting ground.

It may sound like a paradox, given the exponential rise in the number of collectors, both in mainland China and in the overseas communities. So far, however, the impact of their presence in the Western markets has chiefly made itself felt on the later periods of Chinese art, from the Kangxi reign (1662-1722) to the early 19th century. Add that anything provably linked with the Palace — as demonstrated, for example, by certain reign marks painted underglaze on porcelain — triggers wild competition among Chinese bidders.

From the perspective of Western (and Japanese) connoisseurs, all this leaves aside much of the greatest in Chinese art. Sublime pieces could be acquired this past season, ranging from Shang bronzes of the late 12th and 11th centuries B.C. to Tang and Song pottery and porcelain from the late 7th to early 13th centuries.

The most stunning pieces surfaced in New York on March 18, as Christie’s dispersed large consignments from collections formed long ago. This made them particularly attractive because the 1970 cutoff date, established by the UNESCO Unidroit Convention, is increasingly seen by experienced market hands as a time limit beyond which the acquisition of works of art exported from the country of origin without official permit is fraught with long-term risks. Restitution claims might be made in the future, particularly concerning early bronzes and ceramics illicitly dug up from underground caches, which are never accompanied by any permits. These are in real danger of being branded as "stolen goods," with the additional opprobrium of having involved the irreparable loss of the archaeological context, thus destroying the unwritten documentation of cultural history.

Some of the high prices paid for works demonstrably sold in the Western market prior to 1970 probably reflected this fear of a threat hovering over post-1970 exports from China.

A marvelous tripod bronze vessel of the 12th or 11th century B.C. went up to $86,500. It had been bought by the late Arthur M. Sackler from J. T. Tai & Co. on March 24, 1965. The mesmerizing power of the stylized feline mask, called taotie, which is cast in low relief on the sides, is difficult to resist. This particular type of Shang bronze does not seem to have been included among the more recent finds that began to flood the Western market in the early 1980s. Splendor aside, the tripod bronze was a rarity.

However, when objects become too rare, they no longer register with most bidders and can be quite cheap. Although Shang ivory carvings of the 12th century B.C. from the Anyang site are virtually unobtainable (most are in museums), it only took $9,375 to get a magnificent fitting carved with a taotie mask. The experts themselves had underestimated its significance, as witness the unduly modest $3,000-5,000 estimate. Discussed in scholarly publications as early as the 1950s and exhibited at Columbia University in February 1965, the piece could go into any major museum.

I would have most readily succumbed to the lure of some Tang and Song ceramics. The rarest lot by far consisted of a wine ewer and a small globular jar offered together. Medallions molded separately and applied on both pointed to a date around the early 8th century A.D. Most important, these showed the two pieces to have been made as part of a set. Few sets ever reach the market as such, because the diggers break them up, and, if diggers do not, the dealers who handle them tend to sell them a piece at a time.

This set was exceptionally beautiful. The medallions covered in touches of green, ochre and ivory glaze stood out on the amber ground of the ewer and the deeper russet ground of the globular jar. The outline of the lobed medallions cusped at the top, and the riders — in flying gallop, hunting deer — were borrowed and reinterpreted from Sogdia, the ancient east Iranian land of Suguda, as it is called in the Persian Achaemenid inscriptions of the 6th century B.C., and later known to the Romans as Sogdiana. Centered on present-day Samarqand in what is now Uzbekistan, Sogdia was the great intermediary between East and West. Large Sogdian settlements within China played the lead role in the elaboration of a hybrid art of which the set is a remarkable example. The ewer acquired by Sackler from J. T. Tai & Co. "prior to 1975" had obviously reached the West before 1970 — few objects left China during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution — and, by inference, the jar as well, although Sackler apparently bought the two objects separately and miraculously reunited them. At $21,250, just below the high estimate of $18,000 plus the 25 percent fee, the set was a steal.

Another rarity followed, and here bidders were more alert. A squat rounded pot of the 8th or early 9th century had an extremely unusual pattern simulating a bowl with a fitted cover in the form of a more shallow bowl turned upside down, a particularity that was not mentioned in the catalogue. On the cover a lotus chalice pattern, often found on the underside of bowls, emphasized the concept of a vessel turned upside down. It strongly contrasted with the motif of white flakes on green ground on the lower section of the jar, and, as if to make the division between the simulated cover and the lower section crystal clear, two deeply incised lines separated them at the transition. This jar too was included in the 1965 Columbia University exhibition, mentioned earlier. The estimate, $3,000 to $5,000, totally disregarded the rarity of the object, which ended up at $32,500. Even so, it was a great buy.

For collectors in search of the unique, nothing equaled a cizhou high-shouldered vase of the 14th century, with a short narrow neck of the type called meiping. Painted in sepia on ivory ground (the usual colors of cizhou wares), two groups of two standing figures facing each other, staffs in hand, stood out on the otherwise undecorated ground, framed on all sides by sepia bands. The figures were dashed off with a freedom heralding the brisk strokes of the so-called Individualist painters in the 17th century. No other vase with such tableaux, possibly inspired by murals, has been recorded. Arthur Sackler had bought the meiping in 1966 from the New York gallery Warren C. Cox Associates. Again the estimate, $3,000 to $5,000, bore no relationship to the importance of the vessel. At $11,875, it was a giveaway.

Not so the magnificent vase, also a meiping, that came next. The architecture of the shape, more fully rounded and much more powerful, was typical of Northern Song art at its greatest in the 11th or 12th century. The vigor of the form was matched by the extraordinary boldness of the carved pattern of huge peony blossoms and stylized leaves carried by curving stalks painted in sepia brown on the off-white ground. At $134,500, slightly more than the upper end of the estimate, this masterpiece from one of the greatest periods of Chinese ceramic art was worth every penny. I would have gladly run away with it.

One of the greatest objects of the day would have left me more hesitant. Figural carved lacquer of the 13th to 14th centuries ranks among the great achievements of China. Japan greatly admired it — and in turn created masterpieces derived from it, with an added thrust typical of Japanese aesthetics. On March 19th, a red lacquer dish carved with two ducks in flight amidst blossoms had explosive force.

Christie’s ascribed the masterpiece to the Yuan dynasty, which ruled China from 1279 to 1368. Is it really Chinese? Perhaps. However, the lacquer piece was consigned from Japan. True, a dish with an identical pattern carved in black lacquer is in the British Museum, where it is also called Chinese. But that merely invites the question about the second piece too — both clearly originated in the same workshop. Never mind: In the art lover’s eyes, the question of national provenance counts for relatively little. What matters a great deal is condition. Multiple cracks raise serious conservation problems. Had it not been so, it would have made a lot more than the $146,500 it fetched. I would most probably have found its beauty irresistible, and then spent months marveling at the folly of ignoring its fragility.

Here is a tip, if you collect. Damaged goods can still be admirable. Problems only arise when you try to recover the capital invested in a moment of need.

"The Gems I Would Have Taken Home" originally appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July/August 2009 Table of Contents.