Sotheby's Old Masters Week Brings $74 million
Sotheby’s 2010 Old Masters Week totaled $74,181,071 (£45,992,356, €53,148,582), nearly topping the presale series estimate of $52.5/75.5 million*.
The week was led by the spectacular results for Thursday’s sale of Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture, which brought $61,599,250 (£37,911,897) (¤44,000,407), nearly reaching the high estimate of $63 million. Twelve lots sold for more than $1 million, and almost 60% of the works sold brought prices above the high estimate. The sale’s top price of $7,250,500 was garnered by Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s Two Studies of a Bearded Man (est. $5/7 million). The picture was painted by the young Sir Anthony Van Dyck when he was still in Rubens’s studio and shows how fully the artist absorbed the lessons of his master, as well as how soon he had begun to assert his own style.
Leading off the week was Wednesday’s sale of Old Master Drawings, which brought $3,331,750 (£2,063,642) (€2,379,583) (est. $2.6/3.6 million). The top price was achieved by Canaletto’s Study of a Merchant Vessel, which was the subject of a three-way bidding battle and sold to a Private European Collector for $542,500 (est. $200/300,000).
Friday morning’s single-owner sale of Important European Terracotta and Bronze Sculpture from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections totaled $6,826,067 (£4,232,170) (€4,890,679), outpacing the $3.6/5.3 million presale estimate. Spanning the 15th through the 20th centuries and encompassing both southern and northern Europe, Dr. Sackler’s collection of European bronzes and terracotta sculptures is the most extensive of its kind in private hands. Museum participation in the sale was strong, with at least two top American institutions buying in the sale, and the Musée du Louvre securing Joseph Chinard’s seductive terracotta sculpture of Phryne Emerging from her Bath, circa 1784-1787, which sold for $482,500 (est. $400/600,000).
The series concluded with a sale of Old Master and 19th Century European Art, which brought $2,424,004 (est. $2.2/3.2 million).
*estimates do not include buyer’s premium
