Lost Rubens nets a huge profit
Colin Gleadell reveals how one canny seller increased the value of a painting by 1,900 per cent in 16 months
Old Master paintings and drawings earned £118million at auction in London last week – evidence that when the supply of good Old Masters is forthcoming, the demand is there. A £24million Guardi of Venice from the descendants of Paul Channon, former arts minister, and an £18.5 million Turner were the big draws. Observing the supply line was the charismatic dealer Jean-luc Baroni who paid a record £2.6million for a rare, perfectly preserved ink drawing of a coronation scene in Venice by Canaletto, but then had to sit back impassively as a collector he has been advising for years sold a string of acquisitions worth more than £10million at Sotheby’s and Christie’s rather than through him. The sales made little or no gain, however.
An exceptional late Murillo of Christ crowned with thorns that Mr Baroni bought for the collector in 2005 for £2.5million, sold for £2.7million (a loss to the seller after Sotheby’s commissions are deducted). “I would have preferred to have made a catalogue of this collection and exhibited it with a foundation,” said Mr Baroni, but denied the rumours of a bust-up, adding: “We are still friends.”
One of the fastest profits of the sales was made by a bargain hunter worthy of Fake or Fortune? on BBC One. Last March, at an auction in Washington, they bought a painting of a grimlooking old woman on a split panel that was catalogued as Studio of Rubens (ie painted by one of Rubens’s assistants) for £21,000 ($27,000). The mystery buyer then cleaned up and prettified her, covered the panel cracks and had the painting confirmed as by Rubens by the Rubenianum in Antwerp. Thus transformed, it sold for £416,750 ($538,700). Longest bidding battle of the sales came when a record, five times estimate £557,000 was paid by dealer Johnny van Haeften for a still life catalogued as by the rarely seen 17th-century artist David Rijckaert the Younger. Cornered after the sale, Mr van Haeften displayed his superior knowledge: “It’s not Rijckaert; it’s Osias Beert,” he beamed (Beert can make nearer a million).