New York old master auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s

At the old master auctions of the last few years, even before the pandemic, it was less the bidders in the hall than on the telephone and increasingly online interested parties who set the tone. Now, during New York’s Old Masters Week, when a rediscovered youthful portrait by the Florentine Mannerist Bronzino came up for auction at Sotheby’s, the room experienced what department head Alex Bell calls an “old-fashioned auction moment,” or the kind of theater that only extraordinary lots produce.

The authorship of the panel painting, which was restituted to the heirs of the Jewish collector Ilse Hesselberger and furnished various official premises in Germany after the Second World War, including the Federal Chancellery in Bonn and the German Parliamentary Society in Berlin, had been blurred over time – until Sotheby’s now reconstructed. After a lengthy battle between six bidders, a bidder secured the sale for $9 million, $1 million more than Bronzino’s red-bearded young man, who was valued at up to $12 million, made at Christie’s in 2015. Proceeds benefit Jewish charities.

The top prize of the week went to Rubens’ bloodthirsty and erotically charged Salome with the head of John the Baptist, one of ten top-class baroque paintings from the collection put together by real estate entrepreneur Mark Fisch after 1995, which is now being dissolved due to the divorce. The sole bidder on the Rubens was sold over the phone at $23.5 million, $1.5 million below the lowest estimate. It was a so-called White Glove Sale, in which every lot was sold, although not always at the same level as the estimates and not always at a profit, despite the strong interest of international museums and collectors.

Purchased for the National Gallery

The fact that quality is convincing even without big names is proven by the Rembrandtesque young man who fell asleep while reading and went to the Swedish National Museum for 750,000 dollars, slightly above the highest estimate. Thanks to its American circle of friends, the National Gallery in London was able to place a successful bid of 3.2 million dollars for a portrait of Saint Bartholomew by Bernardo Cavallino. The lots, all guaranteed and secured by irrevocable bids, which were auctioned separately, fell slightly short of expectations with total net proceeds of nearly $42 million.

At both houses, auctions of paintings and drawings paint a mixed picture, pointing to an extremely picky clientele in a market that, despite pessimistic assessments of dwindling expertise and scarcity, still produces excellence and is capable of generating strong results. An example of this was the oil sketch by Anthony van Dyck of the gaunt Saint Jerome, which was found in a dirty American barn more than twenty years ago and fetched $2.5 million at Sotheby’s.

The competitor Christie’s, which after the old master auctions were moved to the Classic Week in the spring for the first time since 2016 with a January offer, bet with 14 million dollars for the freshly coming onto the market portraits of Doña Leonora Antonia Valdés de Barruso and her Daughter from 1805 a new auction record for Francisco de Goya. However, the price was below the forecast. The same was true for Turner’s portrayal of the poet Alexander Pope’s mansion, which was estimated at up to six million dollars, for which the gavel fell at 3.8 million dollars.

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The experiment of offering the 76 lots from the collection of the enigmatic Swiss financier Jacqui Safra without reserves appears to have paid off for Christie’s with a white-glove result, despite some returns that fell well short of estimates. At Sotheby’s, some disappointments were compensated for by the pen drawing of Wenzeslaus Hollars, which was offered by half a dozen interested parties. The view over the roofs of London was sold to an American collector for 650,000 dollars, more than ten times the lower estimate.