Portrait of a young girl holding a cat attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, £290,000 at Bonhams.
The work, which was attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561-1635), showed an unidentified child wearing an embroidered dress with yellow lace and carrying the feline under her right arm.
Cats in this period could indicate a variety of attributes but in this instance was most likely to symbolise calm domesticity and comfort.
The 22½ x 17¼in (57 x 44cm) oil on panel featured a number of trademark features pointing to the Flemish artist who became a leading artist in the late- Elizabethan and early-Jacobean court. These included the soft modelling and textures of the figure as well as the use of a feigned brown oval surround, something he adopted in other known portraits.
The yellow lace indicated a date of c.1615-20 as it was only fashionable to dye lace this colour at that time.
The fact that the sitter is shown wearing a necklace of what appears to be coral beads may also be significant. Such beads were worn by children to protect them from misfortune. Gheeraerts, who had lost seemingly all but two of his six children, was known for the ‘sweet melancholy’ of his child paintings, something imbued in the current work.
Having descended through a family collection to the vendor, it appeared with a £50,000-70,000 estimate but, after commanding significant interest on the day, was knocked down at £290,000, the third-highest auction sum for Gheeraerts the Younger according to Artprice.com.
Overall the Bonhams sale raised £1.75m including premium with 50 of the 80 lots finding buyers (62.5%).
Seasonal greeting
Allegory of the months of March and April, with the Villa Medici, a work attributed to Sebastian Vrancx, £210,000 at Bonhams.
Another lot bringing competition was an allegory of spring which was attributed to Sebastian Vrancx (1573-1647). With a long line of provenance going back to 1626, when it was acquired by William Smith in Rome, on behalf of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, the 2ft 7in x 3ft 5in (79 x 1.04m) oil on panel features the Villa Medici to the upper right.
It was part of a well-known series of works painted by Paul Bril (1554- 1626) and his studio in Rome (where Vrancx was one of a number of young assistants) depicting Roman scenes at different times of the year.
Most recently, a pair of winter scenes from the series ascribed to Bril himself made a below-estimate $200,000 (£161,541) as part of the JE Safra collection sold at Christie’s New York in January.
This picture with its rolling hills, vivid colours and rainbow to the background was a particularly elegant example.
Here the estimate was set at £100,000-150,000 but the bidding reached £210,000 – a decent sum for a single panel by Vrancx and a strong result judging by the price fetched by the pair in January.
