The Only Unrestrained Buyer at Sotheby’s Last Night

From time to time a reader will comment on the moniker we use to identify Judd Tully. For those who need an explanation of why we call him The Master, let this virtuoso piece of research mixed with reporting serve as an answer:

Shyness or secrecy seemed to be a theme tonight, as demonstrated by a Tel Aviv-based art advisor who snapped up four pictures for two different clients. Though he declined to advertise his name, the dark-haired advisor, outfitted in a crisply pleated dress shirt and jeans, ticked off a mini-buying spree. First off was Max Ernst’s Surrealist-styled “La Comedie de la Soif” (1941), which sold for £1,6 million ($2.6 million). The same painting last sold at Sotheby’s London in June 2007, basically at the height of the last market boom, for £748,000.

Next was Paul Delvaux’s 48-by-72-inch night scene, “Les Adieux” (1964), which the advisor bought for £1.5 million ($2.3 million) (est. £700-900,000). It had been last sold at the old Sotheby’s Parke Bernet in New York in 1982, for $242,000 at the hammer. The advisor (bearing paddle number 211) also nabbed Rene Magritte’s mysterious, star-lit “Fortune Faite” (1957), a work which has been in the same private collection since the late 1960s, for £825,250 ($1.3 million) (est. £700,000- 1 million). His final purchase of the sale was Joan Miro’s mid-sized, late gestural abstraction, “Personnage” (1973), which went for £1.1 million ($1.8 million) (est. £700,000-1 million).

Star Lots Go Lonely at Sotheby’s London’s Anemic $125 Million Impressionist and Modern Sale (ArtInfo)