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Bonhams – 19th Century European, Victorian & British Impressionist

September 27, 2018
godward

John William Godward

There was another warm-up sale in London – this one at Bonhams.  As you can tell by the title, it covered a wide range of styles and periods… a good indication that the salerooms are having trouble prying loose enough works to create sales devoted to specific periods.

leighton

Frederick, Lord Leighton

Taking the top spot was a nice looking Godward from 1907 titled Dolce far niente which carried a £200-300K estimate and hammered down at £200K/$263K (£249K/$327K with commission).  In second was a pretty little Lord Leighton that made £100K/$132K (£125/$164K with commission – est. £100-150K) and coming in third was a small Grimshaw landscape that beat its £40-60K estimate when it hammered down at £70K/$92K (£88K/$115K with commission).  Rounding out the top five were van Blaas’ At the Window which made £60K hammer (£75K/$99K with commission) and William Blake Richmond’s The Watchers, which surpassed its £15-20K est. — selling for £58K/$76K (£73K/$95K with commission).

Sadly, there were no blockbuster works and a few of the pricier pieces failed to sell – these included paintings by Moreau (way over-estimated at £40-60K), Trouillebert (not one of the more attractive models – £40-60K), Clausen (do you really want to look at the rear end of a horse – £40-60K) and Seago (too dark – £25-35K).

Of the 127 works in the catalog 81 sold, 45 were bought-in, and one was withdrawn, generating a sell-through rate of about 63.5% and a total take of £1.62M ($1.99M/$2.62M with commissions).  The lower end of their presale estimate was £1.93M, so it took the addition of the buyer’s premiums to make it.

Digging deeper we find that of the 126 works that were offered, 18 sold below, 39 within and 23 above their estimate range.  This gave them an accuracy rate of 31%, which is better than most.

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