Looks like Tom Dean made a great deal.
You’ll remember that Dean was the collector who bought Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Girl in a Mirror’ from Gagosian Gallery’s Deborah McLeod during the depths of the financial crisis. McLeod is the one who sent the email coaxing Dean to make “an insulting offer.”
Eventually he did. And the sale became the basis of a lawsuit between Jan Cowles and Gagosian.
Tom Dean had bought the editioned work with some condition problems for $2m. Gagosian had picked it up for $1m from Cowles’s cash-strapped son. On Tuesday, another example of the series of 8 works sold in London for $3.7m, an 85% gain in three years time for Dean if he had sold.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that ‘Girl in a Mirror’ is down from the 2010 sale price of $4.9m and $4m in 2007 which book-ended the financial crisis in the US. Perhaps the uncertainty surrounding Europe brought the London sale price down by more than $1m. Or maybe the
Dean’s work might not have been worth the same amount (we haven’t checked the condition reports.) And there’s no telling if another one of these works would find a ready buyer tomorrow.