Sotheby’s Old Masters sales in New York totalled a modest $74.5m, against a total combined pre-sale estimate of $77.5m - 111.9m, with 124 lots spread over four sales held on the 26th - 27th of January.
The auction marathon began with the sale of divorcing collectors Mark Fisch and Rachel Davidson’s Baroque masterpieces. Headlining the white-glove auction was a 1609 work by Peter Paul Rubens' titled Salome presented with the head of Saint John the Baptist, which fetched $23.3m ($26.9m with fees), almost reaching its low estimate of $25m, which was backed by an irrevocable bid. Another highlight of the collection was Orazio Gentileschi’s Penitent Saint Mary Magdalene, backed by a guarantee, which was auctioned off for its low estimate of $4m.
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All lots in the Fisch Davidson collection were sold, unlike the second auction of the day, where Seattle-based collector Theiline Scheumann offered a group of Dutch paintings up for auction, achieving mixed results.
Following the Dutch Masterpieces, the first part of Master Paintings was auctioned, which came with a total pre-sale estimate of $23m to $33.9m. The results were again mixed: record-highs flanked by middle-of-the-line hammer prices, often just shy of their low estimates.
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Sales were led by Italian painters, in particular Bronzino’s Portrait of a young man with a quill and a sheet of paper, possibly a self-portrait of the artist, (circa 1527), which surprised everyone by doubling its estimate of $5m and achieving $9m ($10.7m with fees), a record for the artist.
The Bronzino portrait had spent decades hiding in a German government office, before it was restituted to the daughter of the original owner, Ilsa Hesselberger, two years ago. The painting had been first acquired by Hesselberger in 1927, but was confiscated by Nazis along with other pieces from her art collection. Hesselberger died in a concentration camp in 1941, age 51. It was announced that proceeds from the auction will be donated to charities and medical aid in New York.
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Initially thought to be a work by Jacopino del Conte, a lesser-known contemporary, the Bronzino attribution and a scholar's theory that the sitter may be Bronzino himself helped it achieve the record price.
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Another surprise came with Anthony van Dyck’s painting A Study for Saint Jerome, (1615–18). The painting had reportedly been found 20 years ago in a farm shed in Kinderhook, New York, streaked with bird droppings. It was then bought by a local collector for $600, and after having been authenticated in 2019, it sold last week at Sotheby’s for $3.08m, 5125 times what the collector had originally paid for it.
See also: Top 10 Rediscovered Masterpieces
The mixed results may signal that some hard times coming for the Old Masters market – as the NY Times reported, Old Masters now account for only 4% of auctions and private sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
But while the buyers may be fewer, they are richer. The record for the most expensive work of art at auction is still held by an Old Master – perhaps the most famous of all – with Leonardo Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, sold in November 2017 at Christie's for $450.3 million. And while auction houses are seemingly trying to appeal to a new demographic of contemporary-minded clients, the Old Masters Weeks in both New York and London almost always bring home record-setting prices for the giants of art history.
