Millionaire Results for Masters of Painting at Sotheby's
The auction totalled £30.7m despite seven unsold lots
On the evening of 3 December, the catalogue of 30 Old Master paintings offered by Sotheby'sa London found a good reception in the room and several bids, especially on the most prestigious lots. The result was an impressive £30.7 million (towards the high estimate of £33.3 million), despite seven unsold lots including a seascape by van de Welde estimated at £1.2-1.8 million and a Christ by Guido Reni (estimate £300-400,000), one of the few paintings of the Italian school offered. There were six million-plus realisations, half of which were over the £5m threshold. According to Sotheby's, this realisation brings the total sold by the auction house's Old Masters department over the year to around $220m, up 50% since 2024, indicating a positive trend albeit in an environment where bringing quality works to market is increasingly difficult.
Held the rare Almshouse triptych and a Tudor portrait
The most interesting lot of the auction was undoubtedly the 15th century triptych from St.Johns' Almshouse, depicting 'The Five Miracles of Christ', painted by an unknown hand in Brussels in the late 15th century, preserved for centuries in the Sherborne Almshouse in Dorset and in excellent condition. The contention between two telephones (one of which was handled by the auction house's contemporary art department) led to the guaranteed estimate of £2.5-3.5m being exceeded by up to £5.2m (or £5.7m with commission). The work was put up for sale to secure funds for the Almshouse Trust's charitable mission, and ended up with another Christian charity that declared its intention to make it regularly available to the town's public, thus preventing the loss of the centuries-old relationship with the area. Another happy ending story in the Christmas spirit, with the 'homecoming' of the Tudor period portrait of Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk in the 16th century, a rare painting by Hans Eworth and one of the few in private hands as it came from the Rothschild collection at Waddeston Manor, which exceeded its estimate of £2-3 million by being sold at £3.2 million with commission to an art advisor representing the Duke of Norfolk and the Arundel Castle Trust. This is a record price for the artist and for a painting from the Elizabethan period.
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Rembrandt rediscovered, Rubens, Hals
The highest bid, however, was at £6.8m for a recently rediscovered Rembrandt painting: the portrait of St. John in Pathmos offered for sale by the Budapest Foundation and secured an estimate of £5-7m, was beaten to £5.5m after a single bid, ending up at the well-known British dealer Johnny van Haeften. As mentioned by Sothebys' department manager, it took 14 months to research and attribute the work directly to the artist's hand. Notoriously, the market for Rembrandt's work is complicated and requires study and patience, and the attribution was discussed with many experts, including museum experts.
The large, richly detailed winter scene painted byPieter Brueghel the Younger 'The Census at Bethlehem', on the other hand, had already gone to auction almost half a century ago and stopped at £4.2 million, within the estimate of £3-5 million, or £5.2 million with commissions. As many as two works by Rubens exceeded the £1 million mark, including a recently rediscovered, preparatory work for a religious work that stopped, after a single raise to the low estimate of 2-3 million, at £2.5 million with commissions, and a dramatic and intense old face that realised 1.3 million, from an estimate of £1-1.5 million. Another portrait of an intense-faced character painted by Franz Hals, 'Verdonck Wields a Jawbone' sold at £600,000 guarantee, below the low estimate of £800,000, which became £762,000 with commission.
The same realisation for a work of English painting, a large composition by Turner on a mythological theme with "Venus and Adonis" contended to a high estimate of £400-600,000, a hundredfold increase on the price obtained at auction back in 1971. The day before on 2 December, the catalogue of the Behrendt collection realised £3.1m, a third of which for a panoramic view of Amsterdam by Hans Bol which fetched £1.1m.
The Christmas break does not affect the painting departments of the great masters, intent on finding buyers for the important New York catalogues at the beginning of February, which among the many masterpieces will see a recently rediscovered rare drawing by Michelangelo and a large multimillion-dollar composition by Canaletto go under the hammer
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