Issue 1945 | 19th June 2010 UK £2.00 – USA $6.50 – Europe €3.95 ANTIQUES TRADE


master pictures page 31 | LONDON


See our extensive preview of Master Drawings London and Master Paintings Week


Failing to return art as market fell cost Christie’s dear


■ Jury awards Halsey Minor millions in compensation


by Roland Arkell


THE troubled internet entrepreneur and art collector Halsey Minor, who in March was ordered to hand over $6.6m for unpaid items ‘bought’ at Sotheby’s, has won a parallel legal battle with Christie’s.


A San Francisco jury found that


Christie’s owes Minor close to $8.5m for wrongly delaying the return of contemporary art consigned for sale at the height of the art boom. Minor’s dispute with Christie’s arose when the auction house, concerned at the collector’s failure to pay his bill for other works purchased at auction, held on to seven works by Richard Prince


consigned for sale at Christie’s-owned Haunch of Venison gallery in May 2008. They included a pulp-fiction Nurse series painting and perhaps Prince’s best-known work, the 1989 Untitled photograph of the Marlboro cowboy valued at the time at around $4m.


The seven works failed to sell but, despite Minor’s repeated requests for their return, Christie’s held on to the pictures, hoping to use them as leverage against the $12m that the collector owed for auction purchases.


The court found that the auction house had no right to do this, regardless of what they were owed for an unconnected transaction.


By mid-August, Minor had paid $5m


toward his purchases but – while the auction house sent emails promising the Princes would be returned to him shortly – they had decided not to ship an estimated $25m cache of pictures until Minor paid his debts in full. However, in the highly volatile


continued on page 4 Established over 10 years ANTIQUES-ATLAS.COM


Our buying prices against a fix of £829.07 are as follows am Thursday


9ct


14ct 18ct 22ct


per gram £9.56 per gram £14.87 per gram £19.11 per gram £23.36


Platinum per gram £28.30 H/M Silver per ounce £10.40


Large Online Catalogue of Antiques for Sale The no.1 UK Fairs Diary National Location Listings Up to date Stock Alerts


Increase your Antique Sales


With our 1 month Free Trial Offer


quote ATGMay10 (subject to t&c’s) Enquiries@antiques-atlas.com CALL 0161 613 5714 Today


Antiques Trade Gazette: 115 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8AF. PRINTED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.


The first slice of the Longridge collection of early British pottery and European vernacular works of art, formed over 30 years by American Syd Levethan, was sold in two sessions for £2.93m by Christie’s King Street on June 10-11. A market-defining sale, replete with all of the current strengths and weaknesses of this traditional collecting area, it included museum quality objects such as this 15in (38cm) Southwark delft dish, above, painted with Saint George slaying the dragon and inscribed John Ayres, 1637. It is a true document of the Stuart period. Made for a prosperous tailor who worked in the City of London, and to a form known in contemporary records as ‘clapmash’ dishes for their similarity to Dutch sailor’s hats, it carries the initials of the painter to the reverse, almost certainly the same hand who decorated an equestrian charger of the same date in the Glaisher collection. Last on the market in February 1995 when it sold at Sotheby’s for £50,000, it


reappeared here to sell at £95,000 (plus five per cent import VAT and 25/20/12 per cent buyer’s premium). It was knocked down to specialist Garry Atkins. The top lot of the sale was another large George and the Dragon dish, but in


press-moulded slipware made by Samuel Malkin, probably at Lazencroft near Leeds, c.1730. It prompted one of the bigger bidding battles of the second day selling over the telephone at £145,000 (estimate £50,000-80,000).


the art MARKET weekly


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80