El Greco, St Dominic in Prayer. (Click on image to enlarge).
El Greco’s St. Dominic in Prayer sold for £9,154,500 at Sotheby’s evening sale of Old Master and British Paintings in London on July 3. A record for a Spanish Old Master the work had been estimated at £3-5 million. It was the top lot in a sale which attracted buyers from 33 countries and realised £35,048,000 million. There were two paintingsss by El Greco – the first time in living memory that two masterworks by the artist featured in the same auction. Christ on the Cross sold for £3,442,500.
Claude-Joseph Vernet’s View of Avignon from the Right Bank of the Rhone sold for a record £5,346,500.
Head of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s Alex Bell said: “The greatest Old Master paintings have a timeless quality that transcends their era and gives them a relevance to audiences today, as tonight’s global bidding and record result for El Greco attest. The dialogue between Old and New is injecting fresh energy into our field. We’re now firmly in a new era, where clients from new markets are collecting Old Masters in new ways. Our response has been to offer the most exciting and diverse works we can find – and to present them a more contemporary way.”
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for June 21, 2013).