Old Masters Reemerge for London Summer Sales

LONDON—Rediscovered works and a few flashy numbers dominated the headlines about this week’s summer Old Masters sales in London, but the auctions themselves were not without their disappointments. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s topped their pre-sale high estimates, but the totals were powered by great prices achieved by top paintings that were either important rediscoveries or reattributions, fresh to the market with distinguished provenance, or in great condition, while many more pedestrian works languished.

Christie's
At Christie’s evening sale on July 8, a rediscovered Watteau masterpiece elicited a hearty round of applause when it sold to London dealer Jean-Luc Baroni, who was standing in the back of the salesroom, for £12,361,250 (est: £3–5 million). The painting, La Surprise, was famous in its day but had been missing for some two hundred years before it was found in the corner of a drawing room in a British country house during a Christie’s valuation last year. It had belonged to Nicolas Hénin, one of Watteau’s closest friends, giving it “the best provenance a Watteau painting can have,” according to Paul Raison, director of Christie’s Old Master paintings department in London. The hammer price was an auction record for the artist as well as a record for a pre-Impressionist French painting.

Other notable lots included a painting of a rearing stallion by Anthony Van Dyck, which attracted three bidders at £1 million before selling for £3,065,250 (est. £1–1.5 million), an auction record for the artist. A Jacobean portrait of a lady, believed to be a depiction of Arabella Thornhagh by William Larkin, one of the foremost artists of his time, sold to London dealer Mark Weiss for £505,250 (est. £400–600,000); the work has been with the Thornhagh family since it was painted in 1617. A sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence of his mother, Lucy Lawrence, executed in the last year of her life, sold to New York dealer Henry Zimmet, director of French & Co., for £373,250 (est. £50–80,000). And The Bad Shepherd, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, depicting a shepherd running away as one of his flock is devoured by a wolf, fetched £2,505,250 (est. £1–1.5 million) from a telephone bidder; the underbidder was London dealer Johnny van Haeften.

Despite the high prices paid for these and other leading works, the sale was not a spectacular success. A third of the 48 lots offered failed to find buyers, including a 17th-century group portrait of the Carnarvon family by Peter Lely (est. £700,000–1 million) and an oil on copper painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder (est. £1.2–1.8 million). Nevertheless, thanks to the Watteau, the evening totaled £24,094,750 ($47,652,000), besting the pre-sale high estimate of £21,740,000.

The house’s day sale, on July 9, earned a total of £5,971,275. Although there was no single star lot, the sale attracted considerable interest for its inclusion of 30 paintings from the collection of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, none of which had been on the market since they were acquired in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the Lichtenstein pieces far surpassed pre-sale expectations, including a painting of a Madonna and Child with an Angel in a Landscape, attributed to the circle of Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci (il Perugino), which made £121,250 (est. £10–15,000), and a 15th-century Lombard School cassone panel, The Continence of Scipio, which brought £157,250 (est. £40–60,000).

Sotheby's
Sotheby’s evening sale on July 9 made £51,488,650 ($101,829,000), which is nicely above pre-sale expectations of £30–44.2 million and marks the second highest total for a single session of Old Masters at Sotheby’s worldwide. Of the 90 works offered, 69 found buyers — a sold rate of 76.2 percent by lot and 93 percent by value.  “The pictures were as good a group as we have had in a long time,” said Richard Charlton-Jones, senior director of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s, who cited both the high quality and the “vast array” of the offerings, which ranged from early Dutch portraits to 18th-century French baroque works.