auction-house

A painting by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens listed for auction by the family of the late Princess Diana sold on Tuesday at Christie's for 9 million pounds ($13.68 million). The picture "A Commander being armed for Battle," was painted in 1613 or 1614. The bearded man had been identified by some as Emperor Charles V and carried an estimate of 8-12 million pounds ($12-18 million). The painting has been at the Spencer family home, Althorp for more than 200 years. Although it was originally described as being in the "school of Rubens" it has now been identified by noted scholars as being painted by the master himself.

The painting is part of a Spencer collection sell-off of approximately $30 million designed to help preserve the family home. Althorp is undergoing a major restoration and the trustees of the estate decided to sell artwork deemed not integral to the Spencer Collection. Diana's brother Earl Spencer also sold off "King David" by Baroque artist Il Guercino for 5.2 million pounds. Overall the auction raised 42.3 million pounds solidly mid-range against an estimate of 36.9-55.8 million pounds.

Four auction houses are betting that the Russians will keep the art market recovery alive. Sotheby's, Christie's, MacDougall's, and Bonhams all have sales lined up this week, and the objective is clear: bring in Russian billionaires, and get them to spend. With a reclining nude portrait, Orthodox icons and Faberge jewelry all going under the gavel, sales could reach as high as $86 million.

Historically, Russians have been reliable buyers of their own culture's works, with William MacDougall noting to Bloomberg that classical nineteenth century paintings leading the charge and early twentieth century pieces showing promise.

And, there's hope from an economic perspective:

"Russia's economy is clearly in recovery and oil prices are up," William MacDougall, co-director of MacDougall's, said in an interview. "The main dark cloud is the Greek debt crisis. While it raises problems for euro-denominated assets, it should be good for fine art, which is a safe haven."

Last year, the four auctions were good for only 29.1 million pounds, down 50 percent from the same week in 2008. Prospects look far better for 2010. Sotheby's has 615 lots, one of which may go for 1.5 million pounds, and Christie's has more than 550 lots with a total top-end estimate of more than 11 million pounds.

Sir Winston Churchill memorabilia was good for more than half a million pounds. A collection belonging to Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. went under the gavel at Christie's, with 84 lots finding new homes. One of them was an unsmoked Havana cigar, which sold for £2,125. It soundly beat the auction's presale estimate of £1,500.

Included with the cigar was a note from the prime minister to Christopher Dunn, with whom he was dining: "Sir Winston Churchill... gave me this cigar at Luncheon – Hotel de Paris [Monte Carlo]" 12 April '63."

Forbes developed this collection over 30 years, and it sold for a total of £577,063 ... and it's only the first of three auctions from this private collection. The ultimate total is expected to exceed £1 million.

It's a tough market for wine collectors. Disposable income is still at a premium, and there is already plenty of competition. There are plenty of brick-and-mortar and online stores catering to wine maniacs ... not to mention the likes of auction houses such as Sotheby's, which dominate the auction scene for liquid bliss. Nonetheless, Vinfolio, which has been around since 2003, found a way to reach into the pocket of former AOL top dog Steve Case (btw: Luxist is owned by AOL).

The amount Case plunked down for a piece of Vinfolio hasn't been disclosed, but it is known that he put $10 million into another luxury business, Exclusive Resorts. Whatever he's put into the business comes on top of $10 million already raised.

Does this mean the upscale wine market is coming back? The economic recovery may still be delicate, but this seems like a smart move for down the road. After all, money in a wine collector's pocket is always looking for a home.

The Impressionist and Modern Art sales on May 4 and 5, 2010 are likely to confirm a continued climb in art auction pricing. We're now six months or so into the badly needed upswing, and there's plenty of room for optimism. Not only are the presale estimates and sales on the way up, but the number of pieces being resold quickly is on the rise, as well. This means that there's a high degree of liquidity in the art market: collectors can sell easily and without worry (as long as the inventory doesn't suck, in which case there's no hope, of course).

The increase in art market liquidity is due in part to the return of guaranteed minimum pricing, in which the auction houses assume some sales risk for attractive or desirable pieces that they feel can beat the numbers and attract buyers and sellers of other strong works. According to ArtPrice, there are "tens of millions of dollars for major works" committed via guaranteed minimum pricing, indicating that confidence is up.

It's the price guarantees that have led to the arrival of some strong pieces at the early may auctions this year, including pieces from the collections of Mrs Sidney Francis Brody, Raymond and Miriam Klein, Bernard Goldberg and Michael Crichton. Brody's works alone could fetch up to $150 million. The high estimate for Christie's is $300 million, a target that doesn't include the top lot, "Nude, Green Leaves" by Pablo Picasso, which as Jared Paul Stern revealed in a recent column is expected to bring in as much as $90 million. Other artists with eight-figure estimates include Henri Matisse, and Alberto Giacometti.

Don't just look for good news – also a expect a few records to b set. Sotheby's has high hopes for pieces by Salvador Dali and Auguste Rodin.

A collector's hidden art stash could be good for as much as $26 million. The collection, which had been owned by Ambroise Vollard, will be sold at Sotheby's sales in May and June. It's been hidden in a bank vault for four decades, and now people have shot at buying works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne and Andre Derain.

Derain's piece, shown above, is the top lot in the collection, a landscape that is estimated with a low end of $13.9 million and the potential to go over $20 million. It heads under the gavel on June 22, 2010 at Sotheby's in London. The following week, in Paris, 140 paintings, drawings, prints and books once belonging to Vollard will be sold, with a presale estimate staring at $3.4 million.

The 141 pieces in the collection were tossed in a Societe Generale vault in Paris by Vollard's associate, Eich Slomovic, in 1939. That's the year Vollard died car crash). Slomovich, who was given the collection to sell on consignment, died in 1942 (cause of death: NAZIs). The vault was opened in 1979 and was scheduled that year for auction. Legal challenges, however, kept the collection in limbo until 2006.

On April 11, William J. Jenack Estate Appraisers and Auctioneers will hold an auction featuring an important Imperial Russian silver box, among other antiques and fine art.

The Russian silver and enamel covered box with a gilt interior has an enameled scene of an 1883 painting, "A Boyar Wedding Feast," by Konstantin Makovsky, signed I.P. Khlebnikov, and measures 1½ by 2½ by 35/8 inches.

Besides being a beautiful work of hand craftsmanship, the silver box is also interesting because of the circumstances surrounding its sale a year and a half ago. In fact, this is the second time William J. Jenack will be selling the silver box because the winning bidder the first time around refused to pay for his purchase.

Indeed, in September 2008, the box was sold at a William J. Jenack auction to a phone bidder for $400,000, which was the result of a heated competition that involved several members of the live audience and half a dozen phone bidders from around the country.

The box, which then had an estimate of $4,000 to $6,000, attracted a great deal of pre-sale attention. "Needless to say, no one anticipated the response that the box achieved," says William J. Jenack, auctioneer and owner of William J. Jenack Estate Appraisers and Auctioneers. "The comparables in the marketplace at that time, never reflected numbers that we were able to accomplish at that time."

Before the box even went up for auction, the auction house received countless calls from interested buyers around the country. "We had people submitting offers to purchase the box before the auction," says Jenack. "Some of the offers were so large---in the $70,000 to $90,000 range---that we realized our pre-sale estimate was way off the mark."

During the 2008 auction, Jenack noticed many people in the audience he did not recognize. The bidding opened at $40,000 and the bidding bounced around the audience until it reached $100,000 when phone bidders entered the competition. "The people in the audience gave up at $150,000 and the phone bidders carried the bidding to $400,000," recalls Jenack.

The silver box was sold for $400,000 (not including a buyers premium of 15% and any applicable taxes) to a phone bidder, who was a Long Island, N.Y.-based dealer who specializes in Imperial Russian works of art.

"The buyer later contacted us to see how much the amount would come to," says Jenack. "We provided him with that information and sent him an invoice." Subsequently, the dealer defaulted on the purchase, and litigation ensued.

In early March, a New York Supreme Court Justice awarded damages against the defaulting purchaser of more than $497,398, representing the successful bid, taxes and buyer's premium. The decision is currently the subject of an appeal in New York State courts.

"Now we have to sell the box again," says Jenack. "Whatever it brings will be deducted from the total that the dealer owes us."

The box is important because it was made by Khlebnikov, who was a craftsman who worked for the House of Fabergé, the jewelry firm in Imperial Russia that designed elaborate jewelry, silver and the famous Easter eggs for the Russian Tsars. Khlebnikov is known to have created objects on his own, such as this piece, without the Fabergé seal of approval. The Khlebnikov box has a pre-sale estimate of $100,000 to $400,000.

The April 11th auction will also highlight Period American, French & Chinese furniture; Chinese & African works of art; American & Continental paintings & prints including signed works after Nikolai Egorovich Sverchkov, Milton Avery, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Bruno del Favero, Rolph Scarlett, Florence Kroeger, Charles Zacharie Landelle; animation art; fine & costume jewelry; small collection of stamps including Duck stamps; door stops; art pottery; Victorian porcelains; Vatican Papal Grand Cross Set of Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem; fossils including a fine ammonite (15 ½ x 18"-approx. 60 lbs) and decorative accessories.

Previews will be held at the William J. Jenack auction facility located at 62 Kings Highway Bypass, Chester NY 10918 on April 7th from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm; April 8th from 2:00 pm to 5:45 pm; April 9th and 10th from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm; and on the day of sale from 9:00 am to 10:45 am. For further information contact (845)469-9095 or email kevin@jenack.com. The catalogue for the sale will be available on-line Friday, April 2nd.

The auction, which will be held live in William J. Jenack gallery, will also be held simultaneously online at www.liveauctioneers.com. It will take place on Sunday, April 11 beginning at 11:00 am. The William J. Jenack website is www.jenack.com.

The 51 lots that Christie's sent under the gavel last night were chosen carefully. The auction was designed to succeed ... which is what you would have thought of every auction until the middle of 2008, right? Nonetheless, the auction house made some bold moves in an effort to push up prices, but only offered lots that would justify putting the necks of its constituent decision-makers on the chopping block.

With a final tally of more than $61 million in line with the high end of the presale estimate, it would appear that Christie's made some smart calls. Forty-six of the lots achieved sale, with one clearing £5 million, nine surpassing £1 million and 16 beating $1 million. Compared to last year's sale, when only 29 lots were offered, the total take surged 3.7X. I tend to be pretty skeptical, but even that sort of result is enough to make me admit that the art market's recovering.

Buyers in Europe and Britain were most active, picking up 41 percent and 33 percent of the sales, respectively. Collectors in the United States followed with 22 percent and Asia at 4 percent.

It looks like not all the revenue ticked up at auction last fall turned into a tangible upside for Sotheby's. The auction house is suing two Chinese buyers for $270,300 because they never paid the tabs they bid up. According to Sotheby's, the winning bidder of a Qing Dynasty cloisonné censer and cover didn't pony up the cash required, "despite repeated requests and demands." Ouch! Another purchased took five antique paintings without paying the tab, Bloomberg News reports.

According to Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby's Asia division, the company wants "to send a message it won't stand for defaults." Ching continues, "We can't have people bid at our auctions and disappear without paying." To show he's serious, he says he's willing to pursue legal action in mainland China, on the off chance that "they think the long arm of Hong Kong law couldn't reach them." And, with Hong Kong now the third largest art market in the world (after New York and London), the message will reach a pretty broad audience.

Sotheby's won't reveal the identities of the non-payers, citing confidentiality policies.

All secrets eventually come out. At the recent London auctions, in which both Sotheby's and Christie's saw several lots set records, Russian collectors poured some money back into the art market, and Laurence Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds, parted with a healthy dose of cash. It's this action that caused a combined tally of £258.9 million (including fees), more than double the result a year earlier.

The UK-based diamond dealer sunk £8.1 million into Pablo Picasso's "Tete de Femme (Jacqueline) at the Christie's auction, spending 100 percent more than the high-end presale estimate for the piece. According to Bloomberg News, Graff confirmed the acquisition by e-mail.

Russian billionaires got back into the game, as well, and they exercised better judgment than they did during the art boom, when prices for artists such as Damien Hirst were propelled to absurd levels.

The Impressionist sector has held on rather well, by comparison. "The market for Impressionist and modern art hasn't been as frothy and speculative as contemporary," said Guy Jennings, partner in the London-based dealership Theobald Jennings. "Last year, prices might have slipped five or 10 percent, but since then there's been some asset inflation. That might not be the case in six months' time if there's a double-dip recession."

The art market's biggest question turned out to have a $200 million answer at Sotheby's on Wednesday night. Led by Alberto Giacometti's "L'Homme Qui Marche I," which an anonymous bidder picked up for more than $104 million, the auction house realized a total take of $235.7 million on 31 sold lots. Nobody expected this outcome, not even the most optimistic art market spectators, let alone a committed pessimist like me. Of course, my first instinct is to suggest that we wait for the contemporary art sales next week, but it's hard to deny that this week's outcome is both promising and exciting.

The Giacometti set a new record for the artist, sailing past the $27.5 million picked up by "Grand femme debout II" at a Christie's sale in May 2008. In driving nearly half the auction's sales, this piece made it clear that the art market comeback is more than the wishful thinking of collectors who have spent more than a year and a half watching their pieces lose value. A year from now, we'll be looking at "Homme" as the symbol of the art market's recovery, much as we've come to see that final $85 million Francis Bacon sale in May 2008 as the peak before the decline.

Eight lots failed to sell at the Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern evening sale, but this hardly matters when considered against the auction's overall performance. Presale expectations were beat by more than 100 percent, thanks in large part to the fact that 17 of the lots sold for more than £1 million each. Three lots crossed the £10 million threshold. Works by Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne, Gustav Klimt and Camille Pissarro easily pushed into seven-figure territory.

Sotheby's reached the high end of its presale estimate for its Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture auction on Thursday. The sale was expected to generate between $38 million and $55 million, and the final result came in at $53.4 million. The top performer was "Jupiter and Antiope," a 1612 mythological scene by Hendrick Goltzius, though the $6.7 million winning bid failed to reach the low end of its presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million. The last high for this artist, though, was $1.5 million, set in 1996 when the art market was recovering following the burst of its early 1990s bubble.

Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Young Woman with a Black Hat" was also estimated at $8 million to $12 million, but the painting never made it under the gavel. The piece was withdrawn at the seller's request, Sotheby's told ArtInfo. He'd picked up the piece at a Sotheby's New York auction in January 2007 for $9 million, paying much more than the $3 million to $4 million estimate.

It looks like Christie's agrees with me (or, I agree with Christie's): the art market is going to recover this year. The auction house, which is bringing some powerful inventory under the gavel at its contemporary art sale next month, expects the market to recover this year. With the improvement in conditions, price guarantees may return, as well.

In 2009, Christie's states, sales fell to 2.1 billion pounds, a decline of 24%. For the contemporary category, which was hit worst by the art market slump, sales dropped 59% to 244.3 million pounds -- in 2007, it only took a handful of pieces to get up to this amount.

According to Edward Dolman, chief executive of Christie's, "These figures were much better than we expected." He observed to Bloomberg News, "The art market is vulnerable and we thought we'd be down 50 percent, as we were in the last recession in 1991." Christie's, along with the other major house, Sotheby's, were able to compensate for weakness in contemporary art with sales of Old Masters, wine and jewelry. Also, performance in Asia contributed to the salvaging of 2009, where average selling rates by lot gained 5% to 80% in 2009.

The Old Masters group gained 1% last year, one of only four categories to show an up-tick in 2009. The best performer, however, was the 20th Century Decorative Arts category, which posted a 149% increase, helped along by the 21.9 million euros paid for an Eileen Gray chair at the record-setting Yves Saint Laurent sale.

Christie's and Sotheby's aren't being shy with the Old Masters. Pieces by Rembrandt, Raphael and Van Dyck are being offered at hefty prices, some records, that could bring in up to $133 million. If this happens, art collectors will have doubled last year's result ... and cast a strong vote in favor of an art market recovery.

The Christie's sale on Tuesday will include a portrait by Rembrandt and a sketch by Raphael. They are being estimated at 18 million pounds and 12 million pounds, respectively. According to Christie's, these are the highest estimates seen at auction, says Bloomberg News. The Sotheby's sale occurs on Tuesday, featuring a Van Dyck portrait that could fetch as much as 3 million pounds.

Unlike the volatile market for contemporary art, prices for the Old Masters have been relatively stable, as the supply is diminishing and demand is increasing.

According to Johnny van Haeften, an art dealer based in London, told Bloomberg News, "Prices at auction are very strong because there isn't much out there." He continues, "People don't want to sell at the moment. They're saying, 'If I let a painting go, where do I put the money? I'd rather keep it in a work of art.'" He bid unsuccessfully for two still life pieces by 17th century Dutch painter Adriaen Coorte. Both ultimately sold for more than 10 times their high-end presale estimates.

[Photo via Christie's]