Auction Houses

Portrait of a Portrait Artist

June 7, 2010 by

Tonight, Sotheby’s offers Yuri Annenkov’s Portrait of Zinovii Grzhebin for £800,000 to £1,200,000. Grzhebin, the subject of the 1919 painting, was a prominent literary figure of Russia’s Revolutionary Era whose publications often featured collaborations with World of Art artists like Annenkov.

Although Annenkov completed portraits of numerous Russian cultural and political leaders, such works rarely appear on the market. The last comparable example to cross the block was Annenkov’s Portrait of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Tikhonov, which nearly doubled its high estimate, bringing £2,260,500 at Christie’s in 2007.

The estimate on the forthcoming Grzhebin portrait is about the same as the one carried by the Tikhonov portrait (the Grzhebin portrait‘s low estimate is £100,000 less, but the high estimate is the same). Will the Grzhebin portrait also mimic the Tikhonov portrait’s record-breaking performance? For more on Annenkov’s market and the fate of Sotheby’s cover lot, see the latest edition of The ART Report.

[wpsc_products product_id=’7′]

Russia's Post-Boom Blues

June 4, 2010 by

Was Russian art’s recent influx in value just a boom-era phenomenon? Russian sales achieved most of their highest prices in 2007, when works like Konstantin Somov’s The Rainbow soared in the sales room, overthrowing their estimates by factors of two, three and sometimes even four.

Since 2007, however, both high and average prices in the category have ceased to climb. For analysis of Russian art’s current value, as well as a comparison between Russian art and art from other emerging markets, see the latest edition of The ART Report.

[wpsc_products product_id=’7′]