William Dobson’s haunting self-portrait must be saved for the nation
Jonathan Jones hopes William Dobson’s Portrait of the Artist (c.1637), which was up for sale yesterday, will be saved for the nation. The painting carried a £200-300K estimate and sold for £1,106,500 ($1.44M) with the buyer’s premium — a record auction price … More…
How 2 Rembrandts in a Paris Bedroom Ended Up at the Rijksmuseum
A pair of portraits by Rembrandt have found their way into public collections. It appears that in order to settle a tax bill, Robert de Rothschild needed to sell a Rembrandt portrait he inherited from his father, Alain de Rothschild. It was one … More…
The $3 Billion Family Art Feud
Nice article by Kelly Crow, in The Wall Street Journal, about the battle over the Goulandris art collection. According to Kelly, Greek shipping mogul Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise, aren’t household names, but the 16-year family feud over their … More…
London Auctions Hit Bump as Richter Pulled, Diamond Unsold
Ok, so their star lot (Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (811-2)) was pull just before the sale started … the real test was the whole sale. As we saw, the sell-through rate was very impressive (36 of the 39 lots offered sold) and … More…
London Zoo to auction off unseen animal paintings by Agasse
The London Zoo is selling 4 paintings by the Swiss artist Jacques Laurent Agasse (1767-1849). These works were originally commissioned in the 1820s by Edward Cross who owned a menagerie that for a time was located on Trafalgar Square. The … More…
Contemporary Sale in London — Brexit? What Brexit?
From the results at this evening’s sale of Contemporary art in London one has to wonder if Brexit will have any ill effects on the art market. 46 works offered, 40 sold (87% sell-through rate) and a total take of … More…
Comments on the Art Market – Volume 187
Source: Newsletter Archives – Our 187th edition of Comments on the Art Market was released today … we hope you enjoy it. This month we cover the recent sales in Europe, the Dark Side of the art world, Stocks, Really! and … More…