Even by the standards of an Old Masters sale, the sell-through at Sotheby’s evening sale yesterday was a weak 62%. Nonetheless, the sale posted a strong $27.2m total with very good showings for particular works.
The biggest runner was this Willem Drost painting, Flora, which was estimated at $400-600k and sold for $4.625m. A re-discovered Rubens and Adam de Coster’s A Young Woman Holding a Distaff Before a Lit Candle (which was marketed with a bizarre video showing tableau vivant recreation of the painting) also sold for multiples of the estimate range at or about $5m.
