Christie’s and Sotheby’s offered up their Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist art earlier this week over in London and the results were uninspiring. Without the buyer’s premium, neither sale made it into the pre-sale estimate range and both left a considerable chunk of material unsold…
Christie’s was up first and leading the way was the catalog cover-piece – James Smetham’s The Mandolin. Though it wasn’t even projected to crack the top three (based on presale esimates), the work blew by its £100-150K estimate as it hammered down at £390K ($523K — £476K /$639K with premium). In second was a work by John Atkinson Grimshaw, one of several works by the artist up for sale here… This work, Liverpoool Lights, found a buyer at £280K hammer ($376K — £344K/$462K w/p) on a £200-300K estimate; another work by Grimshaw also brandished a £200-300K estimate yet it failed to sell. Rounding out the top three was another work by Grimshaw – this one estimated at £120-180K, found a buyer at £135K ($181K — £168K/$226K w/p). A few other works by Grimshaw made good prices as well as a drawing by Burne-Jones which fetched £100K w/p. All said, only 77 of the 123 (62.6%) works found a buyer and totaled just £2.47M w/p ($3.3M) – the low end of the pre-sale estimate was £2.3M, so they needed that extra bump from the premiums.
Let’s just get it out of the way… Sotheby’s was even worse… oh well. The lone bright spot on the evening was John Roddam Spencer Stanhope’s Penelope – in similar fashion, the cover-piece of the catalog. The work topped it’s £400-600K estimate at £640K w/p ($866K). Well off in second was a work by Godward at £150K ($201K – Est. £120-180K) followed by a Grimshaw at £125K ($168K – Est. £120-180K). Nothing else broke the 6 figure mark… in fact, only two other lots even topped £50K – nothing too exciting. When the evening ended, nearly half the sale was left unsold… of the 82 lots on the block, just 45 sold (54.8%) and the total take was £1.8M ($2.43M)… the low end of the presale estimate was £2.07M… again, keep in mind that the sales total includes premiums and the presale estimate does not, so they were way way off.