MARKET NEWS
Apainting that the Russian government exchanged for political papers during the Cold War sold for £33 million at Sotheby’s last week. Painted by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1913, Painting with White
Lines is considered part of the vital development of abstract painting. But in 1974, when the exchange took place between the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and Cologne collector William Hack, it was not highly valued by the Russian authorities because it did not conform to state-approved socialist realism. Now sold by Hack’s descendants, the painting was bought by another German collector, but one based in London.
Rod “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Stewart will be asking art buyers to disregard the tight trousers and bouffant hair-do and ask, “Do you think I have a good eye?”, as he divests himself of eight 19th-century paintings from his art collection at Christie’s next month. Stewart has been known as a buyer of art from the period, but not everything in the sales is top-drawer. The best offering is a portrait of a woman kneeling in a garden, embracing a pot of herbs. Isabella and the Pot of Basil
was painted by John William Waterhouse in 1907, with reference to a tragic poem by John Keats. Inside the pot is the severed head of Isabella’s lover, the basil nourished by her tears – not perhaps what you’d expect of our Rod.
The painting was once owned by the unfortunate Lord Lambton, who got caught up in a sex scandal in 1973. Stewart bought it in 1981 from a private collector in Los Angeles and hung it above his bed in his Beverly Hills mansion. One of the more valuable paintings by Waterhouse to come onto the market, it is estimated at £1 million-£1.5 million.
London stages its major contemporary art sales this week, but the fun has been spoilt by Christie’s, which cancelled its sale, saying it was going to concentrate on the Frieze week auctions in October instead. One reason given was that their June sales had been falling off – but all the sales fell off last year. The decline has been more prominent for Christie’s October sales which have fallen consistently since 2013.
Another reason given was that June is too close to New York’s big May sales to allow them time to put a good sale together. But Sotheby’s, Phillips and Bonhams have done it. Obviously a truly spectacular October sale is in the offing.
An exhibition for the turn-of-the-century Newlyn School artist Stanhope Forbes, at Penlee House in Cornwall, should attract art-loving holidaymakers this summer. For those with long memories, it includes the most expensive Forbes ever sold at auction:
The Seine Boat, bought from Phillips in 2000 for £1.2 million.
The market for Newlyn School paintings, then in its heyday, had been driven in the Eighties by dealer David Messum, who campaigned for the artists to be described as “British Impressionists” – a phrase the market took up, even if art historians did not. Quite a number of the paintings in the show have been located with his help.