Moments ago Botticelli’s Portrait of a young man holding a roundel sold for $92,184,000 at Sotheby’s in New York sale of Master Paintings and Sculpture. It shattered the previous record for a Botticelli by nine times and was the highest price ever paid for an Old Master at Sotheby’s. It was last purchased at auction for $1.3 million in 1982.
The Botticelli now stands alongside Francis Bacon’s Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus as the second work to have surpassed $80m at auction since Sotheby’s pioneered the new live-streamed auction format some seven months ago. The sale today is among the auctions which attracted the highest number of participants ever seen in a Sotheby’s live-streamed auction. Some 66% of bidders registered online. This echoes the pattern of 2020, which also saw many new buyers enter the field.
The Botticelli becomes the second most expensive Old Master ever sold at auction. In 2017 Leonardo’s Salvador Mundi mde $450 million at Christie’s and is the most expensive Old Master ever sold at auction.
Belmont House and other important clients is the title of a three day online sale by Sheppards of Durrow on February 3, 4 and 5. The auction will feature a large range of antique furniture, art, jewellery and collectibles among more than 1300 lots. The catalogue is online.
This William IV burr walnut and ebony inlaid card table sold for a hammer price of 800 at Victor Mee’s January decorative interiors sale yesterday. The auction of 1,140 lots continues today and can be followed on easyliveauction.com
Seas, Sherkin is the title of this 2020 work by Majella O’Neill Collins at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online sale of affordable Irish art which runs until February 1. The artist lives on Sherkin Island in west Cork and this oil on canvas, which is lot 12, is estimated at 1,200-1,800. The catalogue with bidding options is online.
Seas, Sherkin (2020) by Majella O’Neill Collins. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,500 AT HAMMER
The Sitting Room by Norman Teeling is lot 42 at de Veres online auction of 120 lots of art to suit all budgets which continues until February 2. It is estimated at 300-500. de Veres say that this sale is ideal for buyers wishing to begin an art collection. The catalogue is online.
Norman Teeling – The Sitting Room. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 650 AT HAMMER
Jean Etienne Liotard’s pastel portrait of Philibert Cramer is a highlight of Christie’s online sale of Old Master and British drawings including property from the Cornelia Bessie Estate in New York. Philibert and his brother Gabriel were the principal publishers of Voltaire and responsible for the first editions of major works such as the novel Candide. This portrait is estimated at $400,000-$600,000. The sale runs to January 28.
Jean Etienne Liotard – Philibert Cramer. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $810,000
The family collection of Patricia Mountbatten, whose father, son and mother in law were murdered by the IRA, will come up at Sotheby’s in London on March 24. The 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma was one of seven people aboard Shadow V when it was blown up by the Provisional IRA off Cliffoney, Co. Sligo in August 1979.The party comprised Lord Mountbatten, Lord John Brabourne (Patricia’s husband), their 14 year old twins Timothy and Nicholas, Lord Brabourne’s mother Lady Doreen Brabourne and 15 year old Paul Maxwell from Fermanagh, a friend of the family. Mountbatten, Nicholas Brabourne and Maxwell were killed immediately. Lady Brabourne died the next day and the others survived serious injuries. In a press release Sotheby’s say that Lady Mountbatten, who died in 2017, dealt with her tragedies with extraordinary courage and grace. More than 350 lots from Newhouse, the Brabourne’s 18th century home, will come under the hammer at Sotheby’s on March 24 with estimates ranging from £80 to £100,000. The sale unveils tales of an important family through the art and objects they lived with. Born in 1924 Patricia Mountbatten was great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, great niece of Russia’s last Tsarina, first cousin to Prince Philip and the daughter of Britain’s last Viceroy of India. She had an unconventional upbringing, from weekend parties with King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson at her parents’ estate in Hampshire to evacuation on the eve of the Blitz to stay with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III in her palatial Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. In 1943 Patricia entered the Women’s Royal Navy Service and met John Knatchbull, 7th Lord Brabourne (1924-2005). They married in 1946. As a Captain in the armed forces, Brabourne had worked for Patricia’s father in India, and later became an Academy-Award nominated film producer, behind titles such as A Passage to India and Agatha Christie adaptations Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. When Patricia inherited her father’s peerages, the pair became one of the very few married couples in England each of whom held a peerage in his or her own right and the custodians of two great inheritances. John’s included Mersham le Hatch, an elegant house by Robert Adam in the Kent countryside, where the Knatchbull family had settled in the 15th century. Furnished by the great Thomas Chippendale in the 1770s, it held within it objects with extraordinarily diverse provenances, including the explorer and botanist Sir Joseph Banks who travelled to Australia on Cook’s first expedition, Jane Austen’s beloved niece Fanny and the Marquesses of Sligo. Patricia inherited precious objects associated with her parents from their Art Deco penthouse on Park Lane – with treasures from Edwina’s maternal grandfather, the great Edwardian financier Sir Ernest Cassel – and their time in India. Among the lots to be offered is an Anglo-Indian inlaid bureau on stand supplied by Thomas Chippendale to Sir Edward Knatchbull in 1767. It is estimated at £40,000-£60,000. The stand was made by Chippendale for the sum of £4 to house the Indian inlaid miniature bureau. The sale of 350 lots will offer jewellery, furniture, paintings, sculpture, books, silver, ceramics and objets d’art.
UPDATE: Over 1,400 participants from 55 countries drove the sale total to £5,620,798, over three times the pre-sale estimate with 98% of lots sold.
IT is not everyday that a painting by Botticelli comes to auction, and it is not everyday that a sale of Old Master drawings features a strong Cork connection and a tenuous but definite link to the monster Frankenstein. Next January 28 in New York will be just such a day. Led by Botticelli, Rembrandt and Bernini the highest value Masters Week in Sotheby’s history runs in New York until January 30. The seven Sotheby’s auctions of paintings, drawings and sculpture with works spanning four centuries is headed by Botticelli’s Young Man Holding a Roundel. Sotheby’s are confident that this work will establish art market history as one of the most significant portraits of any period ever at auction. They have not published an estimate but rank it alongside Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (sold in 2006 for $87.9 million) and Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet (sold in 1990 for $82.5 million). As only about 12 portraits by the early Renaissance Florentine master are known – nearly all of them in major museum collections – it seems likely that this rare and characterful portrait could break all existing records. It comes up at the marquee sale of Master Paintings and Sculpture alongside 45 other works with estimates of from $70,000 to $30 million, the top estimate for Rembrandt’s Abraham and the Angels. (The Rembrandt was withdrawn from the sale)
The Cork connection turns up at Christie’s online sale of Old Master and British drawings including property from the Cornelia Bessie Estate which runs until January 28. Lot 81 is a portrait by the Irish artist Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739-1808) of Robert King, 2nd Earl of Kingston and Caroline (nee Fitzgerald), Countess of Kingston. He was an MP for County Cork. They lived at Mitchelstown Castle where they hired the author and founding feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) as governess to their daughters. (It is a pity that the governess did not have the opportunity to educate and civilise their son George who grew up to be the notoriously brutal commander of the North Cork Militia during the 1798 Rebellion). The daughter she influenced most was Margaret King who, as Lady Mount Cashell, undertook a grand tour and published her diaries. The unconventional Wollstonecraft died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein and wife of the poet. The Kingston portraits are estimated at $12,000-$18,000
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 15, 2021)
Sandro Botticelli – Portrait of a young man holding a roundel UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $92,184,000
A death mask of Patrick Kavanagh by the Cork sculptor Seamus Murphy comes up at Hegarty’s online auction in Bandon on January 31. Etched with the name of the poet and dated 1967 it is estimated at €6,000-9,000. The lot is accompanied by with a collection of personal correspondence between the the artists wife Maighread and well known collector Barbara Vance who was married to Douglas Vance, general manager of The Metropole Hotel in Cork from 1944 – 1985. Two other plaster examples of this mask have are recorded, one at The Writer’s Museum, Dublin, the second at The Patrick Kavanagh Centre, Monaghan.
SEAMUS MURPHY RHA (1907-1975) – DEATH MASK OF PATRICK KAVANAGH (1904-1967). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 5,100 AT HAMMER
Artists who are much admired and collected in Ireland feature at Dolan’s first timed online auction which runs until January 25. A 1963 painting by Cecil Maguire of Purteen Harbour, Achill, offers dramatic west Coast views and is estimated at €6,000-€8,000. There is a similar estimate on Girls on a Beach in PInk and Blue by George Russell, redolent of easy relaxation during long summer days. Mark O’Neill, Arthur Maderson, John Brobbel, Sean McSweeney, Markey Robinson and Robert Egginton are among the many artists who feature. An Ireland of days gone by is recalled in Market Day, Roundstone by Lady Kate Dobbin (€2,000-€3,000) while Girl with Umbrella, Reflected by John Shinnors (€3,500-€4,500) is an arresting work of an entirely different era and style. Musicians by Manus Walsh (€600-€800) is a stained glass panel by an artist who created some of the windows for Galway Cathedral. The sale of more than 260 lots features some antique furniture, rugs, books and collectibles including a Steiff teddy bear and a Hornby train set.
Girl with Umbrella, Reflected by John Shinnors. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
