An in-depth model of this sale report is obtainable on Artwork Market Monitor to AMMPro subscribers.
Whereas Christie’s doesn’t stage Previous Grasp work gross sales in New York in January, it does nonetheless go head-to-head with Sotheby’s for drawings. However the document exhibits the previous home trailing. In 2019, it was $15 million to $2.7 million in favor of Sotheby’s, and in 2020, $15.1 million (together with a $11.7 million Mantegna) at Sotheby’s in comparison with $5.4 million at Christie’s.
Final week, Christie’s opened the most recent spherical with a snug $3.9 million for a sale that was estimated at $2.3 million–$3.4 million. (Costs embody the client’s premium; estimates don’t.)
This included a $724,000–$1.1 million assortment fashioned by the late Cornelia Bessie, an artwork guide writer, which offered for $1.5 million. Bessie’s foremost focus was on 18th-century French artists. Topping the invoice was a crimson chalk drawing of a seated younger girl by Fragonard which Bessie had been given by her mom, artwork seller Kate Schaeffer, in 1982. The reward realized a double estimate $1.1 million. An additional 13 Fragonards— all made for Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando furioso– have been from the gathering of American patrons Nina R. and Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. and all offered, largely above estimate for costs as much as $56,253 every.
The subsequent day, Sotheby’s star lot from its multi-owner sale was to have been an early Anthony van Dyck working drawing of an previous man holding a bundle, The Therapeutic of the Paralytic, with an estimate of $2.5 million–$3.5 million. The value was stated by sellers to be too excessive–aimed solely on the high van Dyck collectors. Van Dyck’s document for a piece on paper is $280,000 for a drawing offered by Christie’s in 2019. Actually, no curiosity was registered earlier than the sale on the document estimate stage and, moderately than watch it purchase in, the collector agreed to withdraw the work from the sale.
This diminished the pre-sale estimate to $2.6 million–$3.9 million, leaving a traditional Swiss lakeview by J. M. W. Turner pitched at $700,000–$1 million because the lead lot, previously within the assortment of Switzerland-based philanthropists Man and Myriam Ullens. It was offered by an English collector simply above the excessive estimate to a U.S. collector for $1.3 million.
U.S. collectors continued to dominate the sale. An additional selection work by a British artist, Loss of life of Ezekiel’s Spouse, by the eccentric William Blake, offered to a different U.S. collector for a double estimate $289,8000. This collector, bidding on-line with paddle quantity 193, additionally paid a triple estimate $63,000 for a drawing of a woman’s head by Francois Boucher, an above-estimate $25,200 for an uncommon drawing by Ingres, and an intriguing research of horse-riding putti by the mysteriously named Grasp of the Blue Wash.
A 3rd U.S. collector, bidding by London-based skilled George Gordon, produced the shock of the public sale–a document $315,000, or over 30 instances the $6,000–$8,000 estimate for a drawing by Italian baroque artist Guercino for his portray Apollo Flaying Marsyas. The eight-inch sq. ink and wash drawing is regarded as certainly one of solely two identified research for this portray, the opposite being within the British Royal assortment.
The fourth main U.S. acquisition was made by an unnamed establishment (not the Getty, I’m assured), for a view of a teeming regatta on the mouth of the Grand Canal in Venice by Francesco Guardi. Final available on the market in 1920, it is without doubt one of the largest Guardi sheets to outlive and is corresponding to works from the identical sketchbook within the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork and Harvard’s Fogg Artwork Museum. Estimated at $600,000–$80,000, it offered for a document $1.2 million, together with the premium.
One European collector favoring the Dutch and German faculties disrupted the American dominance, shopping for three of the highest 10 heaps by Jan Brueghel the Youthful (a double estimate document $201,600), Hendrick Goltzius (an above estimate $113,400) and Hendrick Avercamp (a beneath estimate $75,600).
Sotheby’s adopted up within the afternoon with the sale of John O’Brien’s assortment of Italian drawings, titled “From Taddeo to Tiepolo.” Right here, the take up was good with 112 of 133 heaps, or 84 %, was offered for $1.8 million together with premium, simply scraping by the low estimate of $1.5 million with out the premium.
Non-public collectors claimed the highest heaps lead by a formidable double-sided sheet of research for the Frangipani Chapel by Taddeo Zuccaro at a mid-estimate $228,800. A European collector claimed two research by Giovani Battista Tiepolo, certainly one of a boy at a quadruple estimate $151,200, and a New York collector paid a document $100,800 for a uncommon and enormous research for a portray within the Duomo of Naples by Corrado Giquinto.
“Contemplating how few folks have been really capable of view these gross sales, maybe a very powerful artworks to view bodily due to the possibly fragile circumstances, the gross sales did extraordinarily nicely,” noticed London seller, Stephen Ongpin, whose agency bought seven heaps within the sale.
In contrast to the New York work gross sales, although, which have elevated, the $11 million whole for this sequence between the 2 homes (regardless of being above the $6.4 million–$9.4 million estimate) is a little bit of a comedown from the $20 million–plus gross sales of the final two winters in New York.