Old Masters

IT doesn’t happen very often that either Sotheby’s or Christie’s can claim a major sales victory over their rivals, but at the latest Old Masters series in New York one side came out the clear winners.

Old Masters provided some solace for the London auction rooms last week, posting the solid totals and some eye-catching prices to suggest this most established of markets will ride the downturn better than its modern counterparts.

In a week that saw the London salerooms offering their traditional December round of Old Master pictures, continental furniture and works of art, one of the strongest prices proved to be the £1m (plus premium) paid for this lively and intriguing 3ft (90cm) high bacchic bronze at Sotheby's on December 2.

Colnaghi-Bernheimer of London and Salomon Lilian of Amsterdam have unveiled a rare religious painting by the Dutch 17th century master Frans Hals.

WHETHER or not the art market will be able to steer its way through the current financial storm remains an open question. But providing some relief from the constant talk of falling stocks and the global credit crunch, a pair of Dutch marine pictures saw some strong bidding at the latest picture sale held by Woolley and Wallis on October 8.

TO the connoisseurial mind, it was not the paintings that lit up the Old Master series in London in early July but rather three rediscovered drawings by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) offered in a dedicated Old Master and 19th century works on paper sale at Christie’s on July 8.

A rediscovered painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was the toast of the Old Master auction series in London last week. Missing for almost 200 years and presumed to have been destroyed, La Surprise was offered at Christie’s evening sale on July 8.

A TRIPLE portrait of three Elizabethan girls that sold for £620,000 at Christie’s sale of the Simon Sainsbury Collection has now been identified as a picture of the Egerton sisters from c.1601-2.

THE man regarded as the world’s leading authority on Rembrandt has declared the self portrait that sold at auction in the Cotswolds for £2.2m last October as a genuine work by the Dutch master.

It’s hard to believe there are still undiscovered works by the most renowned artists hanging unnoticed in dusty corners of private houses. But that is what a Christie’s valuation team discovered last year.

WHAT looked like yet another Old Master sleeper in the provinces appeared in Gloucestershire on December 7.

New York Old Master dealers Salander-O’Reilly are expected to file for bankruptcy after a state judge ordered their gallery to be closed indefinitely.

ESTIMATED at just £1000-1500, a work catalogued as by a follower of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) has sold for £2.2m at the Gloucestershire saleroom of Moore, Allen & Innocent (15% buyer’s premium).

Whitfield Fine Art pull out as Salander-O’Reilly’s multi-million dollar legal problems escalate

FOUR men, including two lawyers, arrested in a police raid in Glasgow to recover the Leonardo da Vinci stolen from Drumlanrig Castle, have now been charged in a Scottish court.

A pair of 19th century Venetian views by Italian artist Francesco Zanin proved to be the high point of a Silver Jubilee auction held by Ewbank auctioneers of Surrey on September 20 and provided their owner, a local Dorking family, with an unexpected financial bonus when they sold for multiples of their original estimates.

This summer has seen a spate of sleepers awoken in provincial salerooms, but inevitably the one that grabbed the headlines in the national press was the tale of the rediscovered ‘Titian’.

after months of pre-sale coverage in the media, the two recently rediscovered panels of Dominican saints from Fra Angelico’s celebrated 1438-40 high altarpiece for the Church of San Marco in Florence finally came under the hammer at Duke’s of Dorchester last Thursday, when they fetched £1.7m.

A spectacular sleeper was awoken in Sweden on December 5 when an oil sketch catalogued as in the manner of Peter Paul Rubens sold to a British buyer at SEK16.6m (£1,298,000) amidst speculation it was by the artist himself.

Among the highlights of Sotheby’s New York’s $96.9m Important Old Master Paintings sale on January 25 was Portrait of Captain Robert Shore Milnes painted in 1771-72 by Joseph Wright of Derby.