Art market
A Rembrandt enchants, yet, strangely, a Botticelli fails to move; and Old Master drawings invite us to ‘compare and contrast’
THE year of Covid-19 has been organised rather on university lines, with terms and (relative) vacations. Of course, lockdowns one to three have lacked the social elements of Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity and their equivalents, just as the holidays have allowed most of us little in the way of travel. On the other hand, many lessons have undoubtedly been learned—and not only by homeschooling families. The successful mastering of the skills needed to sell online is among the most obvious for many businesses, and certainly for the art trade.
Also, time has been behaving oddly. Anyone much beyond the age of 21 is aware that usually years shrink; a simple example of the Theory of Relativity. Last February seems an age ago, but the weeks and months since have gone past in a blur. When I looked up my column on Sotheby’s first intercontinental online sale of important paintings from Rembrandt to Richter, I confidently expected to find it in October, or perhaps November. It was, in fact, August 13, and I had watched the sale itself as it happened on July 28.
Six months have eye-twinkled past and the more prosaically billed Master Paintings & Sculpture took place on January 28. This time, it was based in New York rather than London, but the format was much the same. By happy chance, it was possible to view many of the principal offerings physically, as the London leg of the sale’s world tour occurred during the vacation between our second and third terms.
I had the rooms almost to myself, as I had when I viewed the summer sale, and was able to spend many undisturbed minutes with the two stars of the show, the Botticelli Portrait of a Young Man holding a Portrait Roundel (Fig 1) and the little Rembrandt of Abraham and the Angels. The first was in tempera on a 23in by 15½in panel.
The provenance went back only to about 1790, when it is thought to have been acquired in Italy by the 1st Lord Newborough, but there were no doubts about authenticity. It is undoubtedly a great rarity and in bright condition, but it left me cold, especially when I thought of what Botticelli could do—that great self-portrait, the quietly powerful statement of personality in the Uffizi’s Adoration of the Magi. That was an important advertisement, of course, aimed at patrons, whereas this young man was a job—and had he perhaps been cleaned a little severely? The only emotion in it, I felt, was in the roundel of a saint.
At 6¼in by 8¼in, the little Rembrandt had much the same surface area as the self-portrait in last summer’s sale and, like that self-portrait, it entranced me. It shows the moment when Abraham, who has been entertaining three strangers, realises that two are angels and the third the Lord God himself. Sarah, Abraham’s hitherto barren wife, is at the door and has a small smile on her face as she hears the announcement that she is
to have a son, Isaac, future patriarch of the Israelites. Abraham seems to have been washing his eminent guest’s feet, one of several links to the New Testament in the panel, and it is a charming thought that the Almighty, despite his wings, might be footsore. The light emanating from him is beguiling in its gentleness, far from the Gerontius-like thunderflash more often associated with the Godhead.
Abraham and the Angels had been estimated to $30 million (£21.5 million), but it was withdrawn shortly before the sale. It had attracted one guaranteed bid and, presumably, there had been little other tangible interest, so it went to that bidder in a private deal. Meanwhile, the Botticelli, estimated to $80 million (£57.5 million), was knocked down to Lilija Sitnika of Sotheby’s London, who advises Russian clients, for $92.2 million (£66.6 million). Demonstrating an admirable catholicity of taste on the part of the same buyer, she acquired two double-estimate 19th-century works, A View of the Piazza San Marco by Antonietta Brandeis at $441,000 (£317,000) and the 165⁄8in by 22in Cascade de Terni (Fig 3) by Corot at $600,800 (£432,000).
The Terni Falls, more properly the Cascata delle Marmore, created by Romans in 271bc, is the tallest manmade waterfall in the world. Corot visited in 1825 and made a number of drawings and oil sketches, which point the way to developments later in the century. Sotheby’s cataloguing quoted a prescient letter from Corot to Berthe Morisot in 1857: ‘Beauty in art is truth steeped in the impression made upon us by the sight of nature. I am struck on seeing some place or other. While seeking conscious imitation I do not for an instant lose the emotion that first gripped me. Reality forms part of art, feeling completes it.’
The form of the New York sale was much as in the summer, with stands of Sotheby’s representatives muttering to their clients on telephones, their bids choreographed by Oliver Barker, as before. Fewer of them were called Alex and more were using mobiles rather than retro receivers. This time, as lockdown had resumed between view and sale, there was no token room of welldistanced bidders in person. Some of the novelty of the first occasion had worn off, but the operation seemed smoother.
Only a few years ago, saleroom wisdom was that it was foolhardy to re-offer something at auction until a decade after a previous appearance. When Chinese bidders entered the auction world, they paid no regard to this and their example seems to have spread. There were several instances of rapid flips here, notably a portrait of a young man (Fig 2) by Aert de Gelder at $927,500 (£666,000), which had been bought in Germany in 2019 for €115,000, and a Brueghelian Children’s
Reality forms part of art, feeling completes it
Games by the elder Marten van Cleve, bought in France, also in 2019, by a Belgian collector, or perhaps more properly speculator, for €97,000; it now sold for $625,000 (£449,000).
Unsurprisingly, this was not an occasion for trade buyers. Viewing was possible by appointment, as it was for an online sale of Old Master drawings a day earlier. Old Master is now an elastic term, stretching at least to the end of the 19th century and embracing all European schools and countries. This offers ‘compare and contrast’ opportunities, as between an extraordinarily ambitious and well-controlled 16½in by 27¾in pen and brownwash drawing by Francesco Guardi of The Return of the Bucintoro from S. Nicolò di Lido (Fig 4) and a 14in by 20in watercolour of the Rialto from the Grand Canal by Edward Lear (Fig 5).
Guardi painted the Doge’s state barge returning to the Bacino of St Mark in about 1780 and it is possible that he intended this drawing, one of his largest, as both a study and as a finished
work in itself. For all the bustle of the scene, the architecture is very accurately rendered. Lear’s drawing, which is extensively annotated and dated 1865, looks as if it began as a precise architectural record in pen and ink and was later finished up with dashed-in clumps of moored gondolas and rapidly splashed watercolour. The Guardi was much the rarer and sold for $1.23 million (£884,000), but $37,800 (£27,000) was a good price for the Lear.
Despite a provenance going back to Fawkes of Farnley Hall, a Yorkshire watercolour by Turner was bought in, but his 10in by 14½in view of Lake Lucerne at Dusk (Fig 7) was comfortably over estimate at $1,290,500 (£931,000).
Self-portraits having become a bit of a theme, as they often do, I could not resist a contrasting example from an online sale at Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh. This was by the 81-year-old stage and television playwright and artist John Byrne and was an elegant and witty tribute to a boyhood inspiration. The 30¾in by 281⁄4 in Ceci n’est pas un Auto-portrait (Fig 6) was painted in 2003, but harks back to 1967 when Byrne (as an aspirant artist should) was working as a carpet designer for a factory and wrote to the Surrealist René Magritte, whom he admired, baldly addressing his letter to: ‘Magritte, Brussels.’ It got to his hero, who replied with a supportive message. The self-portrait sold for £20,000. I hope that neither party will take offence, but in other portraits Byrne has a look of Sir Roy Strong. Next week Archaeology as art