Sales prove Victorian art is back in vogue
Announcing the first major retrospective in 40 years for the Pre-raphaelite artist Edward Burne-jones next October, Tate Britain used the artist’s captivating Love Among the Ruins (1870-73) as its lead image. In doing so, the museum doffs its cap to the art market, where, five years ago, Love Among the Ruins sold for a record £14.8million.
Victorian art used to be a high point of the British Art Week sales in London, before shifts in taste brought values down in the 2000s, and the Victorians were shunted to the back end of the calendar.
Recently, though, there has been a bubble of excitement for all things Pre-raphaelite. Last year, there were unexpected six-figure record prices for Edward Robert Hughes, the nephew of Arthur Hughes, and for James Smetham, a follower of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Simon Toll, head of British and Irish Art Post 1850 at Sotheby’s, believes the sexy and decorative Pre-raphaelite look, with its Arthurian overtones, and the more extravagant literary and exotic qualities that came with the later Aesthetic Movement, are appealing to today’s buyers.
These trends were clearly underlined at Sotheby’s and Christie’s final summer sales last week. In focus was Simeon Solomon, an artist associated with the Preraphaelites noted for his depictions of Jewish life and same-sex desire.
Last week, Christie’s threatened to flood the market with 26 Solomon drawings from a single collection, but sold every one to 20 different buyers, two of them international museums. At Sotheby’s the next day, there were another nine from the collection of music talent spotter Seymour Stein, and six of them sold. One of them, a watercolour of the wine god, Bacchus, sold for a record £237,500, three times the estimate.
Female artists associated with the Pre-raphaelites were also attracting strong competition. At Christie’s, a double portrait of the two nieces of the second generation Preraphaelite painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, by Evelyn De Morgan, achieved a triple estimate £125,000. Meanwhile, a record £62,000 was paid for a fetching female portrait by Emma Sandys, the lesser-known sister of Preraphaelite associate Frederick Sandys, and a watercolour by Marie Stillman doubled estimates to sell for £81,250 at Sotheby’s.
Male artists who fetched record prices included Rossetti’s teacher, Ford Madox Brown (£162,500), and Frank Cadogan Cowper (£100,000) at Sotheby’s, and Edward Clifford (£31,250) and Thomas Cooper Gotch (£30,000), at Christie’s.
Topping the bill was John William Waterhouse, a late convert to Pre-raphaelitism. A seductive drawing of a young woman with arms raised, which sold eight years ago for £145,000, achieved a record £500,750 at Christie’s. At Sotheby’s, an oil painting by Waterhouse of a mermaid and a drowning sailor from the Seymour Stein collection, which went unsold when it was last offered 15 years ago, sold for £3.8million. Among the suggested buyers for the Waterhouse works was Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in America.
Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that Christie’s is set to include Pre-raphaelite material in its 19th century European art sales in New York from this autumn, including masterpieces by Waterhouse and Burne-jones in the $1-2million bracket. They also intend to tour the paintings to Hong Kong and Shanghai, where they believe there is a new appreciative audience.
The sexy Preraphaelite look, with its Arthurian overtones, is appealing to buyers