Update: Salander

Philip Boroff writing for Bloomberg states Stair Galleries in Connecticut recently held another auction with property from disgraced art dealer Lawrence Salander. The auction was a success (as were the previous sales) selling 249 of 251 lots for $245,000.00. The pre sale estimate total was $148,000.00. The top two lots were a Steinway baby grand piano and Chinese vase, each selling for $10,000.00.

Boroff reports

Candlesticks known as pricket sticks were also hot. A pair of Italian baroque brass ones went for $2,500. Another pair sold for $2,800.

“Who knew pricket sticks were so popular?” said Stair auctioneer Rebecca Hoffmann, in an interview. “It was just hilarious after a while.”

Lawyer Portrait

Paintings that Salander created also attracted fierce bidding, with a 2008 portrait of one his former bankruptcy lawyers (“Johnny Moscow Truth Defender”) selling for $500 and the 1999 landscape “Top of the Mountain” going for $800.

Ron Gersten, who worked for Salander in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said the dealer told him in a recent telephone conversation that Michelangelo may have been behind some of the pricket sticks. Gersten said Salander also thought that Donatello may have created a plaster Madonna and Child that Gersten bought for $6,500 at the sale. (The Stair catalog doesn’t attribute either to any artist.)

Salander declared bankruptcy amid lawsuits alleging that he sold works he didn’t own and pocketed proceeds. There were also allegations that he misrepresented the provenance of works and engaged in fraudulent art-related investment schemes.

In March 2010, he pleaded guilty to stealing $120 million from such clients as John McEnroe and Robert De Niro. He’s to be sentenced on Aug. 3.

To read the full Bloomberg article, click HERE.