Old Masters

It may be a well-rehearsed refrain, but the Old Master market is much more subject to vagaries of supply than demand. Almost without fail, when high-quality fresh material is offered, bidders will come. Just getting it in the first place is the hard part.

Christie’s highest price for an Old Master this summer came in the stand-alone Masterpieces from a Rothschild Collection sale on July 4.

While the vast majority of works at Old Master sales are by European artists, an unusual offering at Bonhams’ sale on July 3 was a Latin American work by a painter with Afro-Caribbean ancestry.

Just four months after identifying two tiny compositional drawings as the work of John Constable (1776- 1837) and selling them for close to £90,000, west London saleroom Chiswick Auctions struck gold again with a third ‘rediscovered’ landscape.

At a €2.7m (£2.45m) hammer price, a 17th century Flemish flower painting was the toast of the Old Master picture results in Paris this year. It was also the highest price recorded at the Drouot auction centre so far for 2019.

Spectators at an auction in Zürich were left flabbergasted when a Quattrocento panel painting with a SFr5000-7000 estimate catalogued as ‘in the style of Sandro Botticelli (c.1445-1510)’ was knocked down at SFr6.4m (£5.16m) after an intense 10-minute bidding battle.

A black and white chalk on paper drawing of Jupiter and Antiope by Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) was among the highlight sales during London Art Week (LAW).

The 52-lot auction of furniture, paintings and works of art collected by members of the Rothschild family was among the most animated during a packed week of London showpiece sales.

The painting dubbed the ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ that was snubbed by the Louvre in Paris could now go on show in a museum after a private sale.

Views of Venice figure prominently in a collection of 42 Old Master drawings from the 18th century, being sold by Metz in Heidelberg on July 20.