Eclectic London Dealer Daniel Katz Clears £2.3 M. at Sotheby’s

This report on the results of Sotheby's Refining Taste sale of work from dealer Danny Katz's collection by Colin Gleadell is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.) 

Sotheby’s was the chosen cyber venue for dealer/collector, Danny Katz, whose special interests range from Renaissance bronzes to modern British art. Katz, who just turned 72, is a big spender when something excites him, like the Egyptian bronze antiquity he bought at Christie’s in 2012 for £3.7 million against a £400,000 estimate—a record for an Egyptian antiquity. But this felt more like a backroom clearance, with 144 lots priced mostly under £40,000, with several under £10,000. Some items had no reserve so Katz was prepared to let them go for almost nothing, although none did. A small 1960s work on paper by Scottish abstract expressionist Alan Davie had no reserve and was really a giveaway at £2,000 to £3,000, but 44 bids later it realized a reasonable £13,750. With 24 hours to go, 45 of the 144 lots had no bids and had not met reserves, but, with the help of twice-daily email alerts in Sotheby’s newsletters, only 11 were left unsold, and the sale reached an encouraging £2.3 million ($2.8 million), easily surpassing the £1.2 million low estimate.