In Turner's Record-Breaking Sale, Further Signs of a Troubled Market

LONDON — A world record was set for Turner on Wednesday night when a landscape, “Modern Rome. Campo Vaccino,” was sold for £29.72 million, or $45 million. The large canvas, 90.2 by 122 centimeters (35 by 48 inches), was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles bidding through Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, the London dealers specializing in Old Masters and 19th century painting.

The panoramic view was done by the English painter from memory, without paying much attention to the many precise sketches that he had done in the course of his various trips to Rome. It is an impressionistic evocation of the city bathed in a golden sunset haze touched with salmon pink, and some liberties are taken with topography.

Very few Turners of this size and caliber remain in private hands — five or six at the most, according to David Moore-Gwyn, Sotheby’s distinguished expert in British painting. This one was acquired directly from the artist when it was included in the Royal Academy show of 1839. The buyer, Hugh A.J. Munro of Novar, was a close friend of the artist and the executor of his estate who oversaw the vast bequests made by his late friend to the National Gallery, which together with the Tate Gallery holds the largest collection of Turners in the world. “Modern Rome. Campo Vaccino” remained in Munro’s family until April 6, 1878, when his collection was dispersed at Christie’s London. It was then bought by Archibald, the fifth earl of Rosebery, and his wife Hannah (née Rothschild), for 4,450 guineas, a huge price at the time. The landscape remained in the hands of their descendants until a family trust consigned it this year to Sotheby’s.

The historical background of the picture, preserved unlined in its plaster gilt and glazed frame, played its part in the enormous interest aroused.

The price is in line with the previous record set when another large painting, a Venetian view of “Giudecca, la Donna della Salute and San Giorgio” appeared at Christie’s New York on April 6, 2006, where it fetched $35.85 million.

The likelihood of another Turner of remotely comparable importance tumbling into the market in the near future is slim. While Wednesday’s picture cannot really compare with the greatest Turners in which the visible world is reduced to luminous impressions, now in the two London museums, a few professionals seemed disappointed that it had not gone for even more.

Awareness of a unique opportunity regarding the work of the greatest British painter of all times and of the urgency of acting there and then was evidently a factor in the wise decision of the Los Angeles museum’s board of trustees to go all out, despite the current mood favoring austerity and financial restraint.

If confirmation was needed that major paintings by great masters of the European past are vanishing, Sotheby’s sale provided sad evidence to that effect. So few Old Masters now tumble onto the market that both Sotheby’s and Christie’s feel the need to hold combined sales of Old Masters and 19th century works in order to fill their catalogs with enough paintings. In addition, they pad them by throwing in drawings.

Even so, Sotheby’s “Old Master & British Paintings” was astonishingly short on works of reasonably good quality. Dealers fought tooth and nail over the very few paintings that deserved serious consideration.

Every now and then, discoveries are made of previously unrecorded pictures, but there are not enough of these to make up for the drying of supplies.

One such case in Sotheby’s Wednesday sale was the view of a “Guardroom Interior with a self portrait of the artist” by the Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger. This previously unknown picture had been in the possession of the same French family since at least the early 19th century.

Like the Turner, the David Teniers the Younger was spared the many varnishings and restorations that have altered the original appearance of so many pictures. Added to the support, copper, which does not chemically interact with paint and does not absorb it over time, accounts for its remarkable freshness. In earlier days, not much attention would have been given to a Teniers the Younger. This week, novelty and perfect condition induced Johnny Van Haeften, the leading British dealer in Flemish and Dutch paintings, to pay £397,250 for this genre scene painted in the 1640s. The price was within the estimate printed by Sotheby’s.

But when one of the few important north European school pictures came up later, intense competition broke out. Isack van Ostade, the Dutch landscape artist from Haarlem, is famous for his winter scenes. One of these was titled in Sotheby’s catalog “A Frozen River Landscape with a Waggoner Halted at an Inn and a Horse Pulling a Laden Sleigh off the Ice in the Foreground.” Signed in full and dated 1644, it ranks among Van Ostade’s most accomplished landscapes, exceptionally rich in its rendition of village life.

Sotheby’s expected the Van Ostade to sell between £600,000 and £800,000 plus the sale charge in excess of 12 percent. To win the contest, Mr. Van Haeften had to pay £1.83 million, doubling Sotheby’s high estimate. On a more modest financial scale, the price here too reflects awareness that when the opportunity arises to acquire a significant picture by a master from past centuries, it would be unwise to pass as long as your budget can bear the strain of footing the bill
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