Estimated at £4m-6m, it was knocked down to Lowell Libson who was bidding in the room on behalf of an institution. Sitting on the aisle, the London dealer left the auction immediately after the gavel came down.
Libson appeared to be the only bidder and, although the picture sold below predictions, it more than doubled the artist’s record.
The 18.75 x 15.5in (47 x 39cm) oil on canvas was believed to be Liotard’s only interior genre scene remaining in private hands. While his pastels appear occasionally on the market, his oil paintings are much rarer and most are formal portraits.
This example was therefore a different commercial prospect to any work by Liotard offered at auction for a generation.
It was originally purchased in 1774 by Liotard’s long standing friend and patron, William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough and had remained with his descendants ever since.
Co-chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master paintings department Alex Bell said: “The finesse and astonishing vivacity of Liotard’s art is everywhere in this picture. The unbroken provenance stretching back almost 250 years is matched by its rarity, both in terms of subject and medium.”
Uncertain Bidding
The lack of bidding though meant the Liotard was among a number of works that failed to attract significant levels of competition at the sale.
The selling rate by lot was 65% with 28 of the 43 lots finding buyers and the overall £16.5m sale total (including premium) was below the £20.4m-30.2m presale estimate (based on hammer prices).
Among the casualties was a pair of Mediterranean views by Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) that failed to sell against a £3m-5m estimate and a Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765) view of Rome from 1751 that drew no bids against a £1m-1.5m pitch.
With Old Masters, the key problem in the market is the lack of high quality and fresh material, and this was one of the weaker sales in this category that Sotheby’s had put together in recent times.
The best competition of the night however came for the first lot – An outdoor wedding dance by Marten van Cleve the Elder (c.1527-1581) which went eight times over estimate and was knocked down at £880,000 to London dealer Johnny Van Haeften.
Although it had a thick layer of varnish on the surface, the picture was well preserved and promised to clean well.
Jan Brueghel's Still Life
Jan Brueghel the Elder’s (1568-1625) Still life of flowers in a stoneware vase also drew competition as two phone bidders took it up to £3.3m, a record for a still life by the artist. The estimate at Sotheby’s was £3m-5m.
The 2ft 3in x 20in (67 x 51cm) oil on oak panel had been restituted earlier this year to the heirs of Baron Alphonse Von Rothschild. It had hung during the early 20th century at Schloss Schillersdorf, the Rothschild castle in Silesia, but was appropriated by forced transfer in 1939 and allocated to the Národní galerie in Prague.
Lely Work on Paper Record
Earlier in the day, Sotheby’s set a record for a work on paper by Peter Lely (1618-80). Dating to the 1650s, the 15 x 12in (39 x 31cm) black and coloured chalk was one of only two documented self-portrait drawings by the artist. Pitched at £600,000-800,000, it sold to a UK collector at £720,000.
The work came fresh to the market having remained in the possession of the artist’s family, passing down through successive generations for three and a half centuries.
A chalk self-portrait by Peter Lely that set a record for a work on paper by the artist when it was knocked down at £720,000 at Sotheby’s Old Master and British Works on Paper sale.
Even if top works in the Old Master category are hard to come by, the London market should get a boost tomorrow when Christie’s offer the star lot of the series: Rubens’ Lot and his Daughters from c.1613-14 which is estimated ‘in excess of £20m’.
