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Freud’s £4.5m Early Portrait at Sotheby’s in March

January 31, 2019 by Marion Maneker

On March 5th in London, Sotheby’s will sell this early portrait by Lucian Freud of his then brother-in-law Garech Browne. In the 1950s, Freud was married to Lady Caroline Blackwood who would go on to be married to the poet Robert Lowell and be immortalized by him. Freud and Lady Caroline spent a fair bit of time when they were married visiting, Luggala, her family home in Ireland. Luggala was a bohemian refuge overseen by the Guinness family and, eventually, Browne. Here Browne is captured in a small portrait characteristic of Freud’s approach at the time of filling the frame with sitter’s face.

Head of a Boy is being offered with a £4.5-6.5m estimate. Here is some of what Sotheby’s has to say about the picture followed by a video of Tom Eddison:

Embodying the sensational powers of observation which famously characterise Freud’s work, this tightly composed painting from 1956 is a remarkable example of portraiture executed when Freud was just 34 years of age. Small in scale and yet boasting a remarkable emotional intensity, the 18 by 18cm work is at once testament to the artist’s masterful control over his subject, and a tremendous tribute to the sitter – the late Hon. Garech Browne.

The portrait bespeaks the lifelong friendship between Lucian Freud and Garech Browne – dedicated patron of Irish music, poetry and culture, Guinness heir, and last custodian to the magical Luggala estate.

Freud first visited Luggala in the 1940s with his wife Kitty, before eloping with Garech’s cousin, Lady Caroline Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, in 1952. This painting of a young Garech was created at the Luggala estate during a potentially fractious moment in the course of Freud’s tempestuous second marriage; he and Caroline acrimoniously separated in 1957, barely a year after its execution.

Rarely exhibited and yet well known within Freud’s historical cannon, the painting speaks to both the history of Luggala and the history of Freud’s oeuvre in equally important measure. Tom Eddison, Contemporary Art Specialist at Sotheby’s London, explains:

“The first appearance at auction of a portrait of such extraordinary quality from this early period in Freud’s career is an incredibly rare and exciting moment. Head of a Boy from 1956 boasts the technical brilliance and focused scale that is so prevalent in the masterpieces of this period, and as this jewel of a painting demonstrates, Freud was unique in his ability to deliver such extraordinary impact within such a small arena. There is no question that Freud’s most arresting images are born from his closest relationships, and in this painting of Garech Browne we witness a tantalising story that is truly unparalleled – immortalising one of Ireland’s greatest cultural patrons and a bygone era of flamboyant creativity and unprecedented social synergy at bohemian Luggala”.

London Gives Some Second Thoughts About June Sales

June 29, 2018 by Marion Maneker

This wrap-up of the coverage of the June Contemporary sales is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

The great surprise of the London Contemporary art sales was not the strong performance of works by younger artists or overlooked historical masters. Taken together, all four auction houses transacted somewhere around £186m with only a few of those works selling above £10m.

That trend within the art market continues to be pronounced and persistent. We’ll have a more detailed discussion of the sales composition and performance when we publish our sales analysis in the next week. In the meantime, let’s marvel at the unexpected strong performance of the Evening sales of Contemporary art in London just when it looked like these events were getting squeezed out of the calendar.

To be sure, the top of the market is much lower than it has been in the past for these sales. Sotheby’s posted the biggest single lot with a guaranteed Lucian Freud reclining nude that sold for nearly $30m. Just below that was the surprise lot of the week, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s untitled work sold from an American collection (said to be New Line’s Michael Lynne) that composed a significant portion of Sotheby’s sale. It made just below $20m but had carried a low estimate nearly half of the final selling price.

The dogged bidding over the Basquiat began with auctioneer Oliver Barker pushing the opening bids toward the low estimate. It wasn’t long before two aggressive telephone bidders engaged in pitched campaign to out do each other. Their bids came either without the briefest hesitation or in increments greater than the crying required. The underbidder bowed out several times before finally capitulating.

In the current climate where high-value works are sold with an armature of financial support surrounding them which have a tendency to often but not always dampen bidding, it was a rare show of determination by two collectors. Continue Reading

Christie’s Scores By Just Getting It Done

June 21, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Christie’s £128m Impressionist and Modern Evening sale in London, working off a similar estimate range as its rivals, was demonstration of the value of just getting things right. The two top lots, a Picasso and a rare example of Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare series, sold without much excitement. But they sold at or around expectations which did no damage to the sale’s total. That opened the door for Christie’s to make great gains with two or three works that surprised to the upside.

The two most dynamic lots were a lifetime cast of Auguste Rodin’s Kiss which sold for £12.6m over a £7m high estimate and Franz Marc’s Drei Pferde sold for £15.4m over a £3.5m high estimate. The bidding battle on the Marc was as intense as it was unexpected topped only by the unusual fact that art dealer Jeffrey Loria took the additional step of having Christie’s inform the press that he had bought the work for his personal art collection (drawing a distinction from his other holdings that only raised more questions than it answered.)

The fact that outsized gains came from lots with more modest estimates further emphasizes that the top of the market is both fully priced and potentially spent out after the Rockefeller sale. The $700+m that was spent on Impressionist and Modern art in New York at the Rockefeller sale was effectively another major season of spending in the category inserted into the first half of the year.

The secret to Christie’s sale may have been Asian buyers who were mostly absent from Rockefeller but took up about a third of the London Evening sale, according to the auction house. Continue Reading

Christie’s Improves Its Imp-Mod Category Performance

June 21, 2018 by Marion Maneker

This look at the last 12 years of Christie’s June Impressionist and Modern Evening sale performance is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

Christie’s had a stronger sale than Sotheby’s but both events showed that the market for Impressionist and Modern art may have been affected by the tidal pull of the massive Rockefeller sale which featured a full sales season’s worth of Impressionist and Modern art just a month before these auctions.

For many years, Christie’s was the weaker player in the Impressionist and Modern market with results not unlike those seen at Sotheby’s the night before. These last two  June sales cycles were quite different and echo the strong years of 2010 and 2011 when Impressionist and Modern art was seen as a long-term store of value.Continue Reading

Looking for Signs in Sotheby’s £87.5m London Imp-Mod Evening Sale

June 20, 2018 by Marion Maneker

(Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images for Sotheby’s)

Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Evening sale in London came in under expectations last night with £87.5m in sales where both top lots, a Picasso portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter from 1932 and Giacometti’s cat previously owned by the Brody family in Los Angeles, sold for prices that fit with the tone of recent sales in the category.

The sale was down about a third over the previous year’s event with the very top lots accounting for much of the shrinkage, although in this year’s outing there was a good £20m in lost sales volume due to buyers just not showing up.

The Impressionist and Modern market remains both selective and top-heavy but last night’s sale also seemed to fit into some recent themes where the very top works failed to spark interest. As with the New York cycle of sales, bidders focused on particular works that were not necessarily the most highly valued.

The Picasso sold for £27m ($36m) which is a price in line with recent sales of similar works from the same year like the smaller but more striking Le Repos which Sotheby’s sold for a similar price in May. Although Phillips generated a much higher price ~$57m for another 1932 work just a few months before in London, it is not an uncommon pattern to see very strong prices followed by a declension as successive sales satisfy existing demand rather than generating new buyer interest.Continue Reading

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