Scott Reyburn adds his voice to the chorus lamenting the contraction of the Old Masters market. In this week’s International New York Times, Reyburn talks to the pros about what, if anything, is worth buying in the field:

“It’s naïve not to recognize we’re at a pretty serious moment,” said Anthony Crichton-Stuart, director of the London dealer Agnew’s. “There has been a massive taste shift. But when a good old master does come up at auction and it is priced correctly, you do get some excitement.”

“The new money is interested in old masters, but it wants what Duveen sold to the robber barons. It wants names,” said Hugo Nathan, a co-founder of the London advisers Beaumont Nathan. […]

Mr. Nathan was among the few dealers actively bidding at the evening sales. Buying on behalf of a client, he paid £506,500, or twice the estimate, at Christie’s for Charles-Antoine Coypel’s 1737 painting, “The Destruction of the Palace of Armida.”

“Today you have to shop by image,” Mr. Nathan said. “But if you are brave and don’t follow fashion, there are opportunities.”

Old Masters’ Prices Are No Laughing Matter  (The New York Times)