Art Market Monitor

On Thursday, Sotheby’s staged its end of season old masters evening sale at its London headquarters which brought in £10.6 million ($14.2 million), across 23 lots. The evening sale saw a sell-through rate of 72.4 percent, and fell short of its estimate pre-sale hammer price of £9.5 million-£14.4 million by 10 percent.

Among the top sellers was prolific 16th century Antwerp master David Teniers the Younger’s The Wine Harvest, one of the largest works by the artist to come to market. It sold for the first time in over two centuries for £3.6 million ($4.87 million). The work hammered around the low estimate. Formerly in the collection of the noble English Gage family, The Arts Council England published in September a notice of the present owner’s intent to sell the painting. Andrew Fletcher, Sotheby’s head of old masters paintings in London confirmed the painting went to a private collector and will stay in the U.K. The result also marks the second highest price for a work by Teniers, next to his standing record price of $6 million, paid for a tavern scene at Christie’s London in 2019.

“It has more of a narrative that most Teniers paintings do,” Fletcher said of the star lot. “We’re used to seeing tavern interiors or peasants dancing outside of town. This had a real subject to it, a real theme, that is what set it apart from other works. It lifts Teniers up monetarily into one the great painters of the 17th century,” said Fletcher, calling it “the greatest Teniers to come to the market in living memory.”

The second highest result was Sandro Botticelli’s religious scene Christ on the Cross adored by Saints Monica, Augustine, Mary Magdalen, Jerome and Bridget of Sweden— the only work that came to the sale with a guarantee sold for £1 million ($1.4 million), against an estimate of £800,000-1.2 million, going to an online bidder based in Asia. The seller purchased the work at Christie’s in 2003 when it was attributed then to The Master of Apollo and Daphne (Florence) for $284,500. Now, resurfacing on the market after 17 years in private hands, the painting, offered with a new attribution to the Florentine master Botticelli, has appreciated in value by 392 percent.

The increase in value coincides with developments in research around the artist’s late output. “The scholarship around Botticelli’s production after the mid-1480s, which we consider late Botticelli has crystallized properly since about 2005, said Fletcher. The example is from the artist’s commercial period in the late 1480s-90s with his output geared toward the merchant class, according to Fletcher. “There has been this whole corpus of works previously attributed to all sorts of people, various artists in the Botticelli following workshop, which are now firmly believed to be my Botticelli himself,” said Fletcher of the time between the Botticelli’s last sale in 2003 and the present. “In a way, the consignor holding the piece for so long since that time has benefitted from the developments made in Botticelli scholarship over that period.

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Sotheby’s has tapped jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez Fendi, a fourth generation heir to the Fendi fashion house to curate the the first Italian iteration of its “Contemporary Curated” series. Taking place from its Milan headquarters, the online sale comprises 114 works by established and emerging artists with items on offer as low as €400. Bidding is open from December 10-17.

Known for her surrealist-inspired designs, Fendi got her start in 2007 when she launched her namesake label Delfina Delettrez. In 2009, the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris acquired her “Kiss a Frog” ring and “Original Sin” bracelet—making her the youngest designer represented in the museum’s permanent collection, according to Sotheby’s.

Now, the young designer and art collector is bringing her artistic edge to help launch the ‘Contemporary Curated’ auction in Milan— selecting a group of 15 works including Cesare Tacchi’s Col Telefono estimated at €30,000–40,000, Wolfgang Laib’s Reishaus estimated at €35,000–45,000 and Jasper John’s High school days estimated at €20,000–40,000. Other examples from Fendi’s pick include works by Joan Miró, Robert Rauschenberg, Lucio Fontana, Giorgio Morandi, Fausto Melotti, Fortunato Depero and Luigi Ontani.

The Rome-based designer takes inspiration from Roman antiquities to mid-century Italian design. Known for her references to anatomy and femininity, Sotheby’s statement on the partnership describes Fendi’s recent works as inhabiting “a more conceptual sense of the surreal– creating “phantom settings”, which give the illusion of fine jewels floating around the body.”

“I approached my edit for ‘Contemporary Curated’ as I approach my own craft and collecting, gravitating towards pieces that have an openness to them. My heart was set on choosing the work by Cesare Tacchi because I just love its soft shape and material, and I have a piece by the artist at home,” said Fendi in a statement.

Sotheby’s launched its mid-season “Contemporary Curated” sales series, which takes place now in New York and London, in 2014. Since the sale’s inception, the auction house has partnered with various creative heads representing luxury labels owned by its parent company LVMH to attract interest. Previous guest curators have included designers such as Dior Homme art director Kim Jones, Louis Vuitton art director Virgil Abloh, Erdem and Margherita Missoni.

On Tuesday evening, a 17th century painting by the enigmatic French baroque painter Georges de la Tour sold at German auction house Lempertz for a record €4.3 million with buyer’s fees ($5.2 million). It hammered at the low end of its €3 million-€4m estimate.

A Girl Blowing on a Brazier (La Fillette au braisier), painted from 1646-48, came to the Cologne-based auction house from the collection of the late Germania airline founder Hinrich Bischoff, who purchased the work at Christie’s London more than four decades ago in 1975 for £17,850. Before that, it was in the hands of New York collector Spencer Samuels, who purchased the work at Sotheby’s London in 1968 for £25,000.

Despite the artist’s wide-spread recognition during his lifetime and whose artistic output has been associated with Caravaggism, little is known of the artist’s full career beyond that he was active in Lunéville. Best known for his austere and intimate night scenes, only 48 paintings by the artist are known by scholars. The present work, a key example of the artist’s late period— de la Tour developed the motif of a young figure in warm light in the 1630s— is believed to be the last candlelight nocturne privately-owned. All others reside in museum collections.

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In March, Christie’s will sell three major works from the collection of French-Brazilian Surrealist patron Claude Hersaint. Masterworks by René Magritte, Joan Miró and Max Ernst will go on offer during the house’s “Art of the Surreal Evening Sale” in London on March 9. The group of three paintings is expected to a fetch a collective £21 million-£32 million ($28 million-$43 million).

Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s large-scale Le mois des vendanges completed in 1959 is estimated at £10–£15 million ($13.4 million-$20 million). If it reaches its high estimate, it will be among the artist’s top auction records, nearing his current highest price of $26.8 million paid for Le Principe du plaisir (1964) in November 2018 at Sotheby’s.

Alongside the Magritte, two works by Joan Miró and Max Ernst will be offered for the first time at auction. Miró’s Peinture from 1925 is expected to achieve £9 million-£14 million ($12 million-$18.7 million) and Ernst’s Cage, forêt et soleil noir from 1927 is estimated at £2 million-£3 million ($2.7 million-$4 million).

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