Art historian Barbara Rose gives the background to Rembrandt’s “Balthazar’s Feast” in another entry in the Wall Street Journal’s Masterpiece feature:

When Rembrandt painted “Balthazar’s Feast,” his masterly version of the banquet scene described by the prophet Daniel, he was just past 30. He and his young bride, Saskia von Uylenburgh, the daughter of a wealthy burgomeister, whose dowry he was about to squander, were finally moving to their own home. The future looked as bright as the colorful garments and as glittering as the jewels worn by King Balthazar and his court. [ . . . ]

As Rembrandt depicts the scene, we are witness to the moment the turbaned potentate realizes his reign is over as he reads the prophetic words. The inclusion of the viewer as part of the banquet party was a compositional novelty Rembrandt borrowed from Caravaggio’s revolutionary depiction of the risen Christ meeting two of his disciples in the “Supper at Emmaus.” By placing in the foreground the backs of the heads of the apostles surprised by the appearance of a resurrected Christ who stares directly at us, Caravaggio asks the spectator to become a witness like the audience in a theater.

Caravaggio, the master of chiaroscuro who popularized night scenes, died four years after Rembrandt was born, but no important artist of Rembrandt’s generation could ignore the theatricality of Caravaggio. His stark oppositions of light and dark created by illumination coming from within the painting as well as from outside the frame were introduced to Rembrandt by his teacher Pieter Lastman. In “Balthazar’s Feast” these contrasts are still strikingly dramatic and exaggerated. A few years later in “The Night Watch,” the painting that marked the beginning of Rembrandt’s financial decline and fall from fashion, these contrasts are softened into a dark and velvety golden glow. [ . . . ]

There are varied interpretations of the scene, either as an image of the punishment of vanity or as a caution against worshipping pagan idols, the accusation Dutch Protestants made against Catholics. Certainly the painting had a specific cultural meaning when Rembrandt painted it. The punishment of the sumptuous lifestyle of the Babylonian king may also have had a personal significance for Rembrandt, whose extravagant tastes were to ruin him.

Rembrandt’s Rich Banquet (Wall Street Journal)

A stately French family with connections to Holbein’s The Ambassadors sells off the last of their heirlooms in 2000 when this picture was considered the work of an imitator:

Marco Grassi, a New York conservator who was at the auction, said he advised the Swiss collector to make the purchase, which cost 2,000 euros.

When the crude background had been removed a painting created by Holbein emerged. The hands, book and fur had been painted in the style of the artist and infrared photography showed that the underdrawing for the hands also resembled Holbein’s methods.

The Telegraph story doesn’t say whether the Swiss collector who bought it has any plans to sell but the last Holbein portrait to come to market was sold for more than $10 million. However, the real excitement comes not from the dollar value but from the knowledge that Holbein had indeed painted Erasmus, who had been instrumental in introducing the painter to the English aristocracy, and that the thinker and painter remained friends until late in life.

Rare Holbein work bought for a few thousand could fetch millions (Telegraph)

Carol Vogel leads with Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings expert Geoge Wachter’s decision to wait until after the London OMP sales before putting estimates on the Frans Hals paintings that will lead their January sale.

He placed firm estimates on the paintings only this month, just before sending the sale catalog to the printer: $8 million to $12 million for the male portrait, and $7 million to $9 million for the female. He based the numbers on recent Hals prices — for example the $9.5 million paid at Sotheby’s in London in 2007 for “Portrait of Samuel Ampzing,” from 1663 — and on the knowledge that great works by important masters are becoming harder to find.

Inside Art: Pricing Two Portraits by an Old Master (New York Times)

Bloomberg reports on Sotheby’s Old Master sale which was just under Christie’s number from the day before. The sell-through was lower but strong prices were posted for fresh works:

Sotheby’s auction fetched 13.3 million pounds with fees against a low,before-commission estimate of 9.5 million pounds. At the equivalent sale last year, Sotheby’s tallied 32.8 million pounds.[ . . . ]

A painting of a Florentine banker tipped to fetch 200,000 pounds ($294,150) at Sotheby’s sale last night of Old Master artworks in London sold for 15 times more; [ . . . ] The 2-foot, 10-inch-high banker portrait, by the little- known early-16th-century Italian Girolamo da Carpi, was new to the market and sold to a telephone buyer for 3.1 million pounds.

The success of the da Carpi painting “made a lot of sense,” said London dealer Jean-Luc Baroni. “It was a beautiful 16th-century picture. The artist is a rare and good portraitist, and at the moment only the best-quality works are selling.”

“A lot of my clients don’t want to sell pictures at the moment,” said the London dealer Johnny van Haeften, in an interview. “They regard Old Masters on the wall as something solid at a time when equity prices are going down the plughole. The auction houses are going to struggle to find good works.”

Van Haeften, bidding in the salesroom on behalf of a U.S. collector, paid a top price of 3.6 million pounds for a small, 9- inch-high panel painting by the 17th-century Dutch artist Frans van Mieris the Elder. Held in an English private collection since 1975, the meticulously detailed interior scene showed an expensively dressed young woman feeding an African Grey parrot. It was forecast to fetch between 500,000 pounds to 700,000 pounds.

“It’s the best picture of its type. The detail is fantastic and it’s in wonderful condition,” said van Haeften, who paid the previous record of 1.6 million pounds for the artist at Sotheby’s in July.

Banker Portrait Fetches 15 Times Forecast at London Art Auction (Bloomberg)

The Posturing of Connoisseurs Continues

Many art market commentators want to believe that the price acceleration of the last few years has been entirely due to “speculators.” Everyone talks about these speculators but no one ever seems able to identify them. Part of the problem is the simple success of the art market over the last few years. More buyers means more selling which, in turn, generates re-selling.

Most of the so-called speculation is a function of the art trade–and would appear to be carried out mostly by dealers and long-time collectors–satsifying the demand of new buyers. But the old art hands put it about that new savvy buyers have come into the market and cannily flipped pieces for profit, not love. That may have happened in some cases. (Few people think art funds have had a significant effect on the  market.) Most evidence suggests that the new buyers have been on the receiving end of these trades, buying works at inflated prices and getting “stuck” with them. That doesn’t sound very canny, does it?

Nonetheless, the idea of a good market and a bad market continues. Here, Godfrey Barker puts his oar in:

A tale of two art markets is emerging in talk in Bond Street - one bought by collectors which is without serious problems, another inflated by speculators which has fallen sharply. Dealers noted that the Old Masters’ night at Christie’s was preceded by successful November auctions with up to 99 per cent sold of Victorian paintings, Georgian furniture and silver, Chinese ceramics, fine wines, Fabergé, Islamic and Tribal art, Art Nouveau and Art Deco and Natural History, all sectors of the art business where financial game-playing is by and large unknown.

Unfortunately, the facts just don’t support this claim. Christie’s sale was a welcome success with many strong prices. But it did not achieve the low estimate for the sale. Here’s Bloomberg’s tally:

The London-based company’s smaller-than-usual 44-lot auction last night of Old Master and British paintings made 14.7 million pounds with fees against a low estimate of 15.6 million pounds, based on hammer prices. Eighty percent of lots found buyers. Last December, Christie’s equivalent London sale made 18.8 million pounds from 70 lots with just 54 percent of the material sold.

There are two markets but they don’t seem to be a connoisseur’s market versus a speculator’s market. Instead, there appears to be a strong market for rare and exceptional works and then the rest of the market. That suggests many of the so-called new buyers are on the sidelines again.

Even in the Old Master market, the overall trend in dollar volume and average price is down. If you are a recent buyer, that’s a problem. But if you bought before 2006, prices have not eroded value for you yet.

Slow to Rise; Slow to Fall. Old Masters in London Buck the Trend.

Here’s Godfrey Barker on Christie’s Old Master sale:

Old Masters sold last night as if no economic slump had happened.

In an auction topped by a £3,849,250 Canaletto view of The Grand Canal from the Ca’ Corner, sold from the 250-year-old family collection of Viscount Hampden at Glynde Place, near Lewes, four-fifths of the lots found buyers.

A majority was sold at estimates set in the economic sunshine of last summer before the world fell apart.

Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn focused on the Tiepolo that was bought for $4.2 million, well above the pre-sale estimate:

London dealer Jean-Luc Baroni, standing toward the back of the crowded salesroom, had to wait for at least four bidders to drop out before buying the work. “I’m pleased with the price,” said Baroni, who was bidding on behalf of a collector. “It was the best painting by the best Italian 18th-century artist I’ve seen. Six months ago, it could have made five million pounds. Everyone’s scared at the moment.” [ . . . ]

“A lot of traditional Old Master collectors came up for air for this sale,” said Paul Raison, head of Christie’s Old-Master picture department in London, in an interview. “There was a lot of private European bidding. The weakness of the pound against the Euro played a part.”

Raison said there was less bidding from U.S. and Russian clients than there had been in previous sales, without specifying where the buyers are from.

Portrait of a lady leads a stampede at £14.8m winter sale of Old Masters £14.98 winter sale (This is London)

Painting Found in Attic Fetches $4.2 Million in Old-Master Test (Bloomberg)

The Financial Times tells the story behind Christie’s lost Tiepolo that was thought to be commissioned by a Russian Empress but spent several generations in a French attic:

“The painting has lain untouched in the same private collection for over 200 years and, as a result, it remains breathtakingly similar to the way it would have been immediately after it left the artist’s easel.”

The picture is estimated at £700-900,000.

This Summer Sotheby’s “discovered” a new Franz Hals painting–and made a great price with it–now from the Netherlands comes news of not five, but six, newly attributed works. Four of the five newly attributed works are from private collections, the sixth work was found by Christie’s in Paris. With the Sotheby’s Hals attracting nearly $14 million from a collector, expect to see more action on the Old Master market for these works over the coming year.

The Herald in Scotland reports on the possible sale of 27 Old Master paintings from the Duke of Sutherland’s Bridgewater collection that have been on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland. The pictures might be worth £1 billion on the open market. The Duke wants £100 million for two of the pictures to leave the others on loan for an additional 21 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Rothschild lets the Economist browse among his acquisitions:

The first artist he collected was an idiosyncratic Swiss-Italian sculptor, Giacometti. He has been collecting ever since, not just for the walls of his sitting rooms, but for Spencer House in St James’s, London, which he helped to restore (he lent a Panini and a Romney from his own collection), and for Waddesdon Manor, the vast pile in Buckinghamshire, which he inherited from an aunt. Read the rest of this entry »