A Look at the Old Masters Market

A recent NY Times article takes a look at the Old Masters market.  As the contemporary market continues its upward trend, or as some might say, expanding bubble, as appraisers we also need to look and observe what is happening in more traditional categories such as Old Masters.

As the article notes, up until the 1980's the Old Master painting category was the main source in generating income for the international auction houses. As we are well aware of, that is no longer the case as contemporary art has stolen the headlines as well as set records for fine art sales. Also, the Chinese market is noted as another category which is outpacing the more traditional. The times notes a statistic the Old Master auction market contributed about $1.4 billion in total sales. A total value which is now seen in a weeks worth of London or New York contemporary sales.

The NY Times reports

LONDON — People in the art world, and quite a few beyond, are still reeling from the huge prices paid at this month’s postwar and contemporary auctions in New York. Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips’s sales racked up a combined $1.6 billion, the highest total, in pure dollar terms, for any series of art auctions in history. With eight-figure prices now routinely being paid for big-ticket names like Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, and millions for hot young artists, where
does that leave more traditional sectors of the market?

Take Old Masters, for instance. Up until the 1980s, paintings by canonical figures such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Velázquez were the main income-generators for Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Since then, they’ve fallen out of fashion with wealthy collectors, who increasingly want to buy instantly recognizable works by “brand” artists rather than connoisseurs’ paintings whose authorship might be open to question. Now 20th- and 21st-century art, and even Chinese antiques, are more lucrative categories for the salerooms
.
Last year, worldwide auctions of Old Master paintings raised 1 billion euros, or about $1.4 billion — less than a single week of New York contemporary sales — according to the Netherlands-based European Fine Art Foundation. Unlike the supercharged market for contemporary art, auction sales of Old Masters have actually contracted; in 2011, they stood at €1.4 billion. “Old Masters just aren’t sexy,” said the London-based art adviser Wendy Goldsmith, a former head of 19th-century pictures at Christie’s.

“Supply is a problem. There’s so little on the market and it’s difficult to learn about. There are no young dealers coming through the ranks, and there just isn’t the same financial upside that you get with contemporary art.”

As the price of art produced within the past 50 years, or even five years, soars ever skyward, historical paintings and drawings of exceptional quality, whenever they do surface on the market, sometimes look jarringly inexpensive by comparison. Sotheby’s has put low estimates of 1.5 million pounds, or $2.5 million, each on two 15th-century tempera-on-linen drapery studies it will be selling in its July auctions of Old Masters in London. Given that the drawings were originally attributed to the young Leonardo da Vinci, it’s sobering to note their valuations aren’t that much more than the record $1.8 million paid at Phillips on May 15 for a 2011 study of drapery, “Untitled (Fold),” by the sought-after American abstract painter Tauba Auerbach, who is in her early 30s.

Sotheby’s said the Italian Renaissance drawings were among a group of nine works, with a combined estimate of £8.6 million to £12.7 million, being sold on behalf of the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Foundation, which supports individuals with autism. The nonprofit organization was created by Barbara Piasecka Johnson, the Polish-born former chambermaid who became one of the world’s most prominent collectors of historic art after marrying the Johnson & Johnson heir, J. Seward Johnson, in 1971. Mrs.

Johnson’s collection is being sold off following her death in April 2013.In addition to the Sotheby’s group, the foundation will be selling a painting of St. Praxedis, formerly attributed to Vermeer, as well as various items of furniture at Christie’s in July, according to the London-based Master dealer Patrick Matthiesen, who sold a number of works to the
collector over the years. Christie’s, when telephoned, declined to confirm they had received these latest Johnson consignments.

Mrs. Johnson bought the celebrated drapery studies for the then-hugeprices of $6 million and $5.2 million each at Sotheby’s Monaco back in 1989. Then they were admired as the work of Leonardo da Vinci — as described by Giorgio Vasari in his 16th-century “Lives of the Artists” — but subsequent research has placed them in a group of 16 drawings, possibly by several artists, made in the workshop of Leonardo’s master, Andrea del Verrocchio.

These are just the sort of nuanced scholarly issues that can put people off Old Masters, particularly when the all-important name has been stripped from an artwork, creating a serious downside in value, if no quality. The power of the fully accepted Leonardo brand was demonstrated last year when his rediscovered panel painting, “Salvator Mundi,” was sold in a private transaction brokered by Sotheby’s forbetween $75 million and $80 million.

The Johnson drapery studies are now cataloged as “Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio,” a description that might well be problematic to the new brand-conscious buyers entering the Old Master market. The irony is that these buyers may well also own pieces by blue-chip contemporaries such as Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami and Anselm Kiefer, who employ large workshops of assistants.

Similar issues surround the superbly preserved early 16th-century German panel painting, “The Virgin and Child on a grassy bank,” that Sotheby’s describes as being the one and only known painting by the “Master of the Piasecka Johnson Madonna” now that it’s no longer recognized as the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Acquired from an unidentified private source in 1981, this is valued at £600,000 to £800,000.

“If it had been by Cranach, we would have estimated it at four or five times more than that,” said Alex Bell, Sotheby’s London-based head of “These things don’t have to have an attribution to make
them uplifting works of art.”

A late Sandro Botticelli pen and ink drawing of St. Joseph — seemingly the only drawing by the Florentine artist known on the open market — is a far more straightforward proposition at £1 million to £1.5 million. Thanks to its secure attribution, this Old Master has significantly increased in value, having been bought by Mrs. Johnson at auction for $80,000 back in 1988.

“Brand-recognition is important,” said the New York-based art adviser Todd Levin, who curated many of the contemporary art purchases of the American hedge fund manager Adam Sender. Nineteen works from the Sender Collection sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s, New York, on May 14, doubling its presale estimate.

Mr. Levin also advises clients about buying Old Master paintings. “At the moment, for the price of a Christopher Wool you can buy a group of significant works by top-name Old Masters. The key is to be whereeveryone else is not. There are some amazing historical things to buy simply because they are amazing things.”

Source: The NY Times