Diana and Callisto, Gaetano Gandolfi. Estimate: $800,000 – $1,200,000. Price Realized: $4,114,500

After the success of London’s ‘Old Master Week’ that took place in December 2009, expectations were high for the Old Master auctions that took place this week at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York. While perhaps not as rousing as the sales in London, the Old Master auctions in New York marked the first opportunity to verify suspicions that buyers were returning to the art market with confidence. Christie’s two days of sales included the two-part auction of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors on Wednesday and a special private collection sale, A Cabinet of Curiosities: Selections from the Peter Tillou Collections on Thursday, achieved a combined total of $40,858,500. While these auctions were successful, the auction that led the week was Thursday’s sale of Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture at Sotheby’s, which brought $61,599,250 – twelve lots sold for more than $1 million, and almost 60% of the works sold brought prices above the high estimate.

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La Belle Ferronnière, Follower of Leonardo da Vinci – probably before 1750

Dubbed as “an historic event for the art market,” Christie’s Old Master & 19th Century Art sale in London in December realized £68,380,250 – the highest ever total for an Old Masters auction. Following this ground- breaking success, expectations are high as Christie’s kick-off ‘Old Master Week’ in New York today, January 27, with their two-part sale of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors. This sale will present over 320 works from Lucas Cranach the Elder, Jan Brueghel II, Thomas Gainsborough, Gaetano Gandolfi, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, and Samuel Palmer, among others. Total sales are expected to achieve in excess of $48 million. Sotheby’s “Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture” auction will take place on Thursday, January 28 and is dominated by a Rembrandt portrait of a young woman from 1632 estimated at $8m-$12m, along with the controversial painting linked to Leonardo da Vinci – ‘La Belle Ferronnière.’

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Tacita Dean’s Christmas tree, ‘Weihnachtsbaum‘ at Tate Britain via Zimbio

The Tate has been embracing the Christmas spirit this week with a series of headlining seasonal happenings.  The Tate Christmas Tree 2009, “Weihnachtsbaum” designed by Tacita Dean, shocked critics by actually appearing “Christmassy”[Bloomberg]  This weekend, Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall was taken over by Rob Pruitt‘s festive ‘Flea Market’ – originally held at Gavin Brown’s Passerby gallery in New York in the late 1990s, this event was programmed to coincide with the Tate Modern exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World, in which Pruitt also appears [POP Magazine]

Italian police have seized works of art belonging to Carlisto Tanzi – founder of the Italian firm Parmalat who collapsed in a massive fraud scandal in 2003. The 19 paintings and drawings, included works by Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh, and is estimated to be worth more than 100million euros [BBC News]

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Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon that will appear in New York’s Madison Square Park in March 2010 via ArtInfo

Antony Gormley has announced plans to install 31 nude sculptures cast from his own body in and around Madison Square Park in Manhattan’s Flatiron District beginning March 26 [NY Times]

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Self-Portrait, Sir Anthony van Dyck at Sotheby’s, London

As supply diminishes and demand increases for Old Master works, this week’s sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London may be remembered as significant in the recent history of the art market. Collectors seized the opportunity to purchase rare and significant works from the giants of European art history and pushed prices so high that numerous existing records were smashed. The auction of Old Masters and 19th Century Art at Christie’s on Tuesday, December 8, realized £68,380,250 – the highest ever total for an Old Masters auction. 2 of the top 5 prices ever paid for an Old Master work at auction were also witnessed at Christie’s in addition to new artist records for Raphael, Rembrandt and Domenichino. At Sotheby’s sale, a rare self-portrait of Anthony van Dyck that sold for £8,329,250, above the pre-sale estimate £2-3 million, helped bring the total within estimate at £15,098,250. Strong prices, record-breaking prices were also seen for works by the Dutch artist Cesar Boetius van Everdingen and the prominent British masters, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer and Samuel Scott.

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Installation view of Rothko’s ‘Seagram Murals’ via MSNBC

Tate Liverpool exhibits Rothko’s Seagram Murals after a 20-year absence [Artdaily]
Rochelle Steiner, under whose tenure Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls” was sponsored, leaves the Public Art Fund [NY Times] and in related, Sotheby’s CEO takes big paycuts in the wake of the market downturn [Bloomberg]

Alex James, bassist of Blur via The Mirror

Blur’s Alex James to judge Charles Saatchi’s art-star reality TV show [The Mirror]
Jonathan Jones on how consumerism spawned Warhol and Pop art and thus the shallowness of contemporary art [Guardian]
Vanity Fair’s imagined conversations overheard at a MoMA party [VanityFair]
A new show at Paris’s Musee d’Art Moderne acknowledges how Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico sold backdated copies of his own work [Bloomberg]

Patti Smith via The Art Newspaper

Patti Smith, whose Polaroids are showing at Robert Miller gallery, on her early career as an artist and why she feels Jeff Koons’s work is “just litter upon the earth” [The Art Newspaper]

Andy Warhol’s BMW Art Car via W Magazine

The BMW Art Car series by artists such as Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg to appear at New York’s Grand Central Terminal starting March 24 [W Magazine]
Chinese art dealer who sabotaged Christie’s sale of bronzes during the Yves Saint Laurent sale weeps at his shattered credibility [Bloomberg]

Steve McQueen modeling for T Magazine

A brief profile of Turner prize winning film artist Steve McQueen’s fashion aesthetic [The Moment]
The Las Vegas Sun does a post-mortem on the Las Vegas Art Museum, which closed last month [Las Vegas sun via ArtsJournal]

Trailer for ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ via Entertainment Weekly

Soon to open in New York, an art world outsider chronicles his relationship with an art world insider in the film ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ [Entertainment Weekly]
Susan Moore looks at the recent emergence of a homegrown art scene in the United Arab Emirates [Financial Times]

Collectors Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant.  Image courtesy Mary Barone via Artnet

Art in America and Interview Magazine owner Peter Brant opens his private collection to the public, by appointment only, at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center [NY Times]
How the former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland was unable to secure an immense 16,000 piece art collection obtained during a takeover of ABN Amro as that bank’s CEO deftly transferred ownership to a foundation before the merger [TimesUK]
Turner Prize winning sculptor Antony Gormley announces first public art installation for Scotland [TheScotsman]

Laura Hoptman, Massimiliano Gioni and Lauren Cornell, curators at the New Museum of Contemporary Art via NY Times

A preview of the New Museum’s inaugural triennial, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” [NY Times]
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s book “The Conversation Series” includes interviews with artist such as Wolfgang Tillmans and Gilbert and George [ArtInfo]

A peek at Pierogi Gallery’s new annex, the Boiler via NY Times

Williamsburg’s Pierogi Gallery opens new annex, The Boiler [NY Times]
Chelsea galleries, including Andrea Rosen, Barbara Gladstone, Mary Boone and Matthew Marks, to show work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba [The Art Newspaper]

Anish Kapoor’s ‘Temenos’ via AnishKapoor

Construction begins on first of five of Anish Kapoor outdoor sculptures in the UK: the ‘world’s biggest art project’ [DesignWeek]

Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV by Pierre Subleyras via NY Mag

Old masters prove to be a bellwether in the market downturn [Financial Times] as such, The Metropolitan Museum acquires a Renaissance portrait of Pope Benedict XIV for nearly $1 million amidst financial woes [NY Mag] and this painting also is featured here in a separate video discussion on the resilience of old master paintings [Sotheby’s]

Portrait of Bindo Altoviti, by Girolamo da Carpi, via Sotheby’s; Sold for £3.065 million.

Bucking the months-long trend of disappointing auction results, this week’s Old Masters auctions in London (Christie’s on December 2nd and
Sotheby’s on Dec. 3) managed to sell close to the higher end of their expected price range–at least for one auction house.

Sotheby’s Old Masters painting sale raised  £13.3 million against a pre-sale estimate range of  £9.5 to £13.5 million.  Seven new artist records were set, as 61.5% of the offerings were sold by lot, and 71.7% sold by value. A portrait of Bindo Altoviti, a Florentine banker, fetched  just over £3 million compared to top end estimates of  £300,000. The portrait was painted on marble during the Italian renaissance, depicting one of its major business and arts figures, and has been passed down since the late 18th century within a Swiss collector family.  The top lot was easily A Young Woman in a Red Jacket Feeding a Parrot by Frans van Mieris the Elder, which was sold for £3.6 million versus top end estimates of £700,000. Another high-priced lot that beat its estimate was a rare coastal landscape piece by Jan Brueghel the Elder, which went for £1.07 million pounds against top end estimates of £700,000.

Observers attribute the success of the Old Masters auctions to the fact that the genre did not see the astronomical price appreciation that became common in more contemporary art markets. Additionally, Sotheby’s priced the lots less aggressively than Christie’s, its counterpart, which saw less dazzling results–detailed after the jump.  Aggressive estimates have been blamed for the dismal Russian art auctions last week in London, as covered previously in ArtObserved.

Catalogue: Sotheby’s Old Masters Evening Sale
Can Old Masters Weather the Economic Storm? [Wall Street Journal]
Banker Portrait Fetches 15 Times Forecast at London Art Auction [Bloomberg]
Painting Found in Attic Fetches $4.2 Million in Old-Master Test [Bloomberg]
Old Master Paintings Realise GBP13,334,000 at Sotheby’s [ArtDaily]
Tiepolo Masterpiece – Previously Hidden in the Attic of a Chateau in France – Sells for $4,227,780 [ArtDaily]
Old Masters Show the Market Up [ArtMarketMonitor]
Old master sales show resilience amid art weakness [Reuters]

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