Titian - Bring on the Old Masters - NYTimes.com
NEW YORK — Last week revealed the complexity of the new market for Old Masters as sales followed different patterns from one day to the next.
Titian’s “Virgin and Child With Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria” fetched $16.9 million.
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Unforgiving for mediocrities with ambitious estimates, the market is booming as never before when important paintings appear, and performs extremely well if more modest works are offered in a cleverly devised context. At Christie’s, which opened the round of paintings sales early on Jan. 26, the message was ambiguous.
Two world records proved that big money is running after paintings perceived to belong in the uppermost tier, even when the artists do not compare with the great masters of European art.
Melchior d’Hondecoeter astonished professionals when one of his bird compositions displaying a mild sense of fantasy brought $1.65 million. That was outshone by the huge $4 million paid for a view of the Molo in Venice by Luca Carlevarijs, ravishing but hardly a work of stellar importance. Most telling of the upgrading of lightweight artists was the $1.76 million that greeted Pompeo Batoni’s likeness of a pretty woman portrayed under the guise of “Venus Caressing Cupid.” It multiplied the high estimate two and a half times.
But there were also nasty failures, the most resounding of which was a spectacular landscape with harvesters by Joos de Momper and Jan Brueghel, unsold at $1.5 million, far below the $1.8 million to $2.2 million estimate. Only 46 of 74 pictures found takers in the $28 million auction that left the impression of a hesitant market, with alternating surges of enthusiasm and fits of depression.
Sotheby’s Jan. 26 afternoon sale of “pictures from the collection of J.E. Safra” was worse. With too many third-rate pictures, the lackluster session was a minor disaster. The star lot, a simpering scene of a thinly clad lady languidly pulling toward her an equally lightly dressed beau done by Jacopo Amigoni under the influence of French 18th-century court painting was doomed with its $1.5 million to $2 million estimate. It remained unwanted.
Most of the works that found takers did so when the auctioneer allowed them to sell below the lower end of the estimate. One of the few pictures of some substance, Hendrik Sorgh’s “Musical Company,” dated 1661 by the Rotterdam artist, went to a lone bidder who paid $1.76 million. It missed the $1.5 million low estimate by $500,000. Of the 54 pictures offered, only 34 were sold, leading some to wonder whether the market was entering a period of ill-humored reticence.
Sotheby’s superb performance on Jan. 27 dramatically changed the outlook. It always helps when several artists are represented at their best. Several world records were set, the more remarkably as they were established for masters who are little known to the general public.
These began with Perino del Vaga. This great master born in Florence in 1501 was immensely admired in the 16th century. But his painted oeuvre is now only familiar to scholars of Italian art, partly because his masterpieces are tucked away in rarely visited locations. Yet Sotheby’s marvelous “Holy Family With the Infant Saint John the Baptist” was furiously disputed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art came out the winner to the tune of $2.09 million, five times the high estimate. Even so, the acquisition of the hitherto unrecorded panel by an unobtainable master was a coup — the last Perino del Vaga to appear at auction came up in London in 1965.
Another rarity went through the roof. In a monumental scene signed by Willem van der Vliet and dated 1627, a bearded sage seated at a desk smiles, one hand raised in the traditional teaching gesture of the apostles and the other resting on an open book. A woman stands near him, frowning in apparent puzzlement while clutching a mask. Behind the woman, two masked men give blank stares while another character on the left grins as he brandishes a mask. The intriguing composition, perhaps an allegory, has yet to be convincingly explained. A “European collector,” not otherwise identified by Sotheby’s, paid nearly $3 million for the privilege of pondering this enigma painted in the grandest manner of northern European Caravaggism.
The impact of discovery made itself felt on a spectacular scale when a panel on copper by Joachim Wtewael came up, painted in Utrecht, probably in the early 1600s. In earlier times it was credited to Jan Brueghel the Elder. The small scene of “Adam and Eve” in a forest, surrounded by all the animals the artist could think of, is an important addition to the rare Mannerist artist’s oeuvre. At $6.24 million, the panel brought four times the high estimate.
Perino del Vaga, van der Vliet and Wtewael are masters of considerable stature, even if their names may not ring a bell with many.
Two world records established for artists of a much lesser caliber say a lot about the buyers’ bullishness at Sotheby’s Jan. 27 sale. They confirm the intensifying search for anything that looks good and the upgrading process that it generates.
Gerard Dou is no towering figure of Dutch art. His portrait of an elderly lady at a spinning wheel gingerly eating porridge in the chiaroscuro light of a vast room is a reminder that this petit-maître trained in Rembrandt’s studio for some years. Exquisitely done, Dou’s scene lacks the vigor and mastery of Rembrandt’s art. On May 4, 1979, the consignor had bought it in London for the equivalent of $260,000. Last week the panel made an astounding $5.34 million.
A bigger surprise came with an imaginary Mediterranean seaport signed by Joseph Vernet in 1776. The French artist painted numerous seaside views of this ilk. The Sotheby’s picture commissioned by an English lord ranks at the very top of the range. But Vernet is not in the same league as, say, Claude Lorrain, let alone the unrivalled Dutch landscapists of the 17th century. Estimated to be worth $1.5 million to $2 million, plus the sale charge, Vernet’s Mediterranean seaport nevertheless rose to a world record $7.03 million.
It is in this context of mad competition for anything perceived to be the cream of the cream regardless of the school, and even, as in Dou and Vernet’s case, of the artist’s strength, that the highest record price at the Sotheby’s sale — $16.9 million paid for Titian’s “Virgin and Child With Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria” — makes some sense.
Titian is a hallowed name and Sotheby’s large composition is among the very few complex scenes that are still privately owned. On the other hand, the passage of time has taken its toll. Signs of wear are visible in the paint surface. That the Titian should have made it to the low estimate, which was not exactly “low,” reveals a new mind-set among some well-heeled collectors. When confronted at auction with the chance of grabbing monumental pictures by the most famous masters that are about to vanish from the market, they feel that they cannot afford to pass.
Even more interestingly, experienced buyers were equally determined to snap up opportunities far down the financial scale last week at Sotheby’s afternoon session. Johnny Van Haeften of London, the leading European connoisseur-dealer in Flemish and Dutch art, tried his best to bid as unobtrusively as is humanly feasible on a genre scene finely painted by David Teniers the Younger. Sure enough, he managed to bag the “Guard Room Interior” for a song — $86,500.
Another major dealer, Bob Haboldt of Paris and New York, grinned as an extremely good miniature portrait by Godfried Schalken cost him a mere $12,500.
Amusingly, in this rush for artistic gold at every level, an unforgettable masterpiece by Salomon van Ruysdael seen in Sotheby’s morning session of Jan. 27 was not expensive. “A Dune Landscape” dated 1643 is painted with a rare economy of means. A storm is gathering over the desolate stretch of land where humans look puny in the lurid light that brings out of darkness a crumbling square tower. The Ruysdael realized $194,500, a joke for a picture worthy of the Louvre.
Somewhere, a true connoisseur must be singing in the wind right now.
