Mar 4, 2019
You may have read about what must be the attic find of the century in the news in the past week or so: the ‘Lost Caravaggio’.
Valued at up to £130 million, the painting – a rather lurid scene of the Biblical Judith beheading Holofernes – was discovered when a local auctioneer was called in to look at the rather dusty work after burglars had broken into a home in Toulouse and stolen a number of other items.
His inspection led to two years of research, including weeks in the laboratory of The Louvre, before the painting was unveiled as a national treasure in 2016.
As with works of this stature, however, expert opinion remains divided, with some arguing that the picture is the work of another artist or by one of Caravaggio’s students. Nonetheless, enough heavyweight opinion has swung behind the attribution for the auctioneer to proceed with confidence, and I’m delighted to say that it will be the original Toulouse auctioneer who will conduct the sale this summer.
How big a deal is this painting? Including this one, we now have 68 paintings attributed to Caravaggio, a baroque painter and one of the greatest Renaissance masters, who influenced later artists like Rembrandt, another giant of art, but considered a lesser talent than Caravaggio himself.
Feb 25, 2019
The BBC has just reported on an auction of dozens of trainers seized after the arrest of a gangster. In all, the miscreant had 55 pairs of these shoes in varying colours and styles, some rather more eye-popping than others, and together they attracted bids from places as far flung as Australia, Trinidad, Romani and the United States to the Gloucester auction.
Designed by such luminaries as Jimmy Choo, Gucci and Christian Louboutin, the trainers brought in £5000, which will go towards fighting crime.
A tidy sum it may be, but nothing compared to the sort of money that trainers and sneakers can make on the secondary US market these days. Three years ago, Nike released a limited edition of one of its Air Max, which led to a review of the size of the international market in sneakers and trainers, then estimated by Forbes magazine at around $55 billion.
With so many designs, makers and celebrity endorsements to choose from, this follows all the norms of a traditional collecting market.
By the time Nike released its limited edition range, inspired by those worn by the character Marty McFly in the film Back to the Future II, the secondary market in the US alone for trainers was being valued by The Economist at $1.5 billion a year. And the McFly trainers sold for an average $32,275 a pair.
Feb 18, 2019
The other day someone asked me what, among today’s consumer disposables, I thought would make serious money as collectables in the future. Having read about the $100,000 just taken at auction for an original Super Mario Bros game (no, I didn’t know what that was either) I would say the most iconic of computer games must be among them.
Apparently the original game came out in 1985 and was played on a Nintendo NES console (no, still no idea). The one that made a fortune at auction was a tester copy sent out to trial the game, and that is what makes it particularly desirable because the game itself was not rare at all.
What especially interests me, though, is that even when it comes to the most modern collectables, the old rules still determine value: rarity, condition etc. In this case, what added hugely to the price – as it does with toys in general – is that the game remained unopened and so in its original and undamaged packaging.
If you really want to see how far people will go to secure the ultimate rarity, consider the $87,000 paid for a Black Lotus Card from the 1993 card trading game Magic The Gathering. Only 1100 of the original version were made.
Feb 11, 2019
What did you buy your loved one for Valentine’s Day? Flowers? Chocolates? Perfume? Perhaps even a bit of jewellery?
In recent years, the most generous of gifts ever bought at auction or at art fairs for a loved one must surely be those endowed by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich – once a part-time resident just up the road above Rake – on his now ex-wife Dasha Zhukova, one of the world’s foremost art collectors.
Starting with Femme de Venise I, a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti at £7.5 million, which he bought in 2008, he worked his way up through a group of 40 paintings by the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov – at around £20 million plus each – to works by Francis Bacon (£45 million) and Lucian Freud (£20 million).
Beyond the world of art and auctions, I think that it will be hard for anyone to top the greatest expression of love through a gift that is the Taj Mahal. The 17th century wonder was commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in tribute to his much mourned favourite wife, Mumtaz. Taking over 20,000 workmen and craftsmen more than 20 years to, build, it cost the equivalent of around £500 million in today’s money.
Feb 3, 2019
I once found an ancient flint arrowhead just sitting on a chalk path on the South Downs. I’ve no idea what its value would be, or how rare they are, although I expect quite a few have survived down the centuries.
I thought of it when I read the news of a meteorite coming up for sale on Valentine’s Day – the meteorite in question, which crash-landed in Siberia in 1947, is heart-shaped. It came from a huge mass of iron that broke free of the asteroid belt 320 million years ago and, luckily, disintegrated as it entered Earth’s atmosphere, nevertheless wreaking considerable damage even in its dispersed state. The heart-shaped fragment – more desirable than the rest – has a high estimate of $500,000.
That’s somewhat less than the $1m expected for three tiny moon rocks collected by a Soviet space mission in 1970 – reputedly the only documented lunar rocks in private hands.
How much, then, for what has been revealed as Earth’s oldest rock, discovered among the samples brought back from the Moon by Apollo 14? Its composition identified it as having been formed beneath the Earth’s surface, ending up on the Moon after a collision with an asteroid four billion years ago.
Jan 28, 2019
One of the best bits of news of the past week is that the antiques trade now has its own museum exhibition, which has opened in the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle in the Peak District.
SOLD! The Great British Antiques Story, has been developed by Dr Mark Westgarth of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at Leeds and will run until May 5.
While the exhibition focuses on the history of dealing rather than auctions, it does so in a way that demonstrates the contribution made by the trade in general to our cultural landscape. The method is to tell the story through a series of objects loaned by museums across the land, exploring the relationship between the art market and museums, which can be the subject of much controversy and discussion these days.
This is incredibly important because the symbiotic relationship between auction house specialists, dealers and museum curators has been central to the development of the best collections now in public institutional hands. For it is the dealers and specialists who often know more about objects, partially because so many pass through their hands, while the curators are often faced with largely static collections and don’t have access to such variety.
Long may this constructive set of relationships continue!
Jan 21, 2019
One of the best things about the picture sales we have in Fernhurst is that they often include first-rate artists who, for one reason or other, have vanished from the public consciousness over the years. It’s a delight and privilege to play a small role in bringing them to bidders’ attention once more, but it also gives me a bit of a thrill to clap eyes on a stunning landscape, marine scene or portrait that has been hidden away, often for decades or longer, and bring it back into the light once more.
For all the amazing talent and inspiration of the Contemporary scene and its conceptual art, I could spend hours looking at the intricate detail and colour tones of Water Williams’ (active 1841-80) rocky river landscape, On the Lledr, which will appear in our January 30 sale. Here is art at its subtle and moving Victorian best.
It may not be a masterpiece by the Pre-Raphaelites, or a striking abstract by the best of the Modern British movement, but for tone and mood, it’s the sort of work that creeps up on you and has the power to entrance. Who are the figures walking along the path, and where are they going? Is that Snowdon in the background?
This is the sort of painting in which you can truly immerse yourself, and there are plenty more of this sort waiting to be discovered out there. Now that’s thrilling.
Jan 15, 2019
It looks just like a scrap of paper, but to some people it is the equivalent of a rather large bank note. Notes, letters, tickets and other ephemera (as they are collectively known) can take on an entirely different perspective when it comes to auctions if they are associated with a particular person or event that has captured the public imagination.
I was reminded of that this week when I read news of a letter dating to 1803 in which King George III revealed his intention to declare war on France. Snapped up for £11,000, it is a wonderful window on history, conveying some idea of the febrile atmosphere alive in England at the time, with fears of a French invasion in the year before Napoleon crowned himself Emperor.
While a letter from a monarch might be an obvious document to tuck away for posterity, other items are less so. Who remembers the 1966 World Cup scrap album, in which you could post stickers of every team player in the world? I had one of those with only one gap, the Uruguayan defender Néstor Gonçalves. I’m not saying its price at auction would be life changing today, but I could kick myself for losing it during a house move.
The lesson? You don’t have to be a hoarder, and a nice de-clutter every now and then can perk up the home, but just take a second look at anything that you might later regret letting go.
Jan 7, 2019
As we head into 2019, what are going to be the significant events of the year from an auction perspective?
The one that immediately springs to mind is the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969. The market for photographs and other collectables linked to the NASA programme, and particularly the Apollo 8, 11 and 13 missions, has blossomed in recent years, to the point that one leading dealer dedicated his entire stand to the subject at TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s leading art and antiques fair. Expect interest to peak in the June sales.
The world of rock and pop will enjoy a number of major landmarks, but the two stand-outs have to be the 50th anniversary of Woodstock on August 15 and the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album release on September 26.
Original Woodstock tickets have always done reasonable business online, but you have to be very careful about fakes. Don’t forget, too, that the tickets were actually printed for the original venue, Wallkill, New York, which rejected it. By the time 50,000 hippies turned up at Woodstock, where a farmer had offered some land as an alternative, it was too late to sort out alternative ticketing, and so the event turned free – a disaster for the organisers.
However, original film footage and photos should see a spike in prices in the earlier part of the year.
Dec 31, 2018
Just before Christmas, I used this column to celebrate the unassailable greatness of the Rolex brand. Now, I want to reveal what, surprisingly, remains a little known fact about another magnificent brand – this time British: Bentley will be marking its centenary in about a fortnight.
As great a luxury marque as ever it was, this astonishing manufacturer started out in Cricklewood of all places, where its founder, W.O. Bentley, set up shop on January 18, 1919, a mere five years before his car won its first Le mans 24-hour race.
W.O. started as an apprentice railway engineer on the Great Northern, even working as fireman on the footplate, shovelling a total of seven tons of coal on one particularly long day.
What really got him started in the car business, though, was a bit of inspiration from a paperweight made of aluminium alloy, the metal he adapted fro use in making pistons for a modified camshaft. Sound too technical? Well it’s what helped him set a number of new records at Brooklands, and the rest is history.
The auction record for a Bentley? £5m paid for the 1929 Birkin Bentley at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2012.
