Four Decades in an Evolving Market


cant egg was hatched in December 1975 in the South- ern Netherlands, when 28 art dealers came together as Pictura. Over the next decades that chick was to grow into the mighty annual TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s greatest art and antiques fair. In the 1980s, as these new behemoths flexed their


muscles, smaller top-quality fairs were founded to boost specialist markets, among them the Ceramics Fair in 1982, the London Original Print Fair in 1985 and the World of Watercolours the following year. LAPADA was well placed to channel the new collab- orative strength of the trade, and its own fair manage- ment role began with the London and Birmingham Shows from 1991 and 1992.


The 1990s and 2000s saw the art market turned on its head


In 1974 when LAPADA was founded, it was still


Christie’s rule that no members of ‘the trade’ should be invited to boardroom lunches. Only recently had the auctioneers realised that it might be more effective to send free copies of the monthly Forthcoming Sales Notice to potential buyers in the City and new money in the entertainment world than to country house owners whose best contents they had already sold. Now Christie’s and Sotheby’s are themselves dealers as well as auctioneers, and important sales are fixtures on the celebrity round.


Indeed, the major auction houses have changed beyond recognition over the four decades. Where once the world came to London to buy and sell, but the traditional home market still determined the business’s character, now it is truly global, and the commodified art commanding the headlines has nothing in common with traditional collecting fields. The rapid growth in specialist departments from the 1960s to the 1990s was reversed. The old Front Counter system, whereby all new would-be catalogu- ers had to spend time on reception, dealing with the public, seeing both good and bad and learning by lis- tening to specialists, was long ago abandoned, and this is one reason for the lack of young people com- ing into the trade today. The art market has always floated on the ebb and


flow of global economic and political events, from the French Revolution and the agricultural depression caused by the opening up of the prairies during the 1870s and 1880s to the collapse of Communism. Waves of American buyers were succeeded by Japanese in the 1960s, Arabs in the 1980s, Russians in the 1990s and Chinese in the 21st century. LAPADA’s mid-point, 1994, saw a market in flux. The old staples – Old Masters, 18th century British


12


Autumn 2014


and French furniture, European porcelain and silver - were respected, but fading. Impressionists took the records, but modern and contemporary works were catching them fast. Sir Hugh Casson’s 1974 contention that ‘with few exceptions, these prices are fetched only by the dead’ was no longer quite the case, and was soon to be completely stood on its head. The 1993-94 auction season was dominated by ce- lebrity collections with striking prices paid for sou- venirs as well as art. Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, Hubert de Givenchy, Barbra Streisand, and a 96-year-old former Chinese warlord, Zhang Xueliang must have been delighted with the sales of their col- lections. The estates of American millionaires Peter Sharp (Old Masters) and Wendell Cherry (Impres- sionists and French furniture) also attracted feverish bidding. A buyer’s market ensured that prices would not rise significantly. Auction houses, however, re- corded a rise in seasonal turnover – Sotheby’s turnover increased 19% and Christie’s 14%. The Paris auction- eers recorded a 5.5% increase in the first six months of the year against the same period of 1993. However, there were also large bought-in percentages. Such ce- lebrity sales replaced the previous run of British, Irish and Continental stately contents sales, notably Font- hill, Malahide and Mentmore.


Above Echoing market developments, John Noott Galleries Ltd exhibited mainly 19th century paintings at the LAPADA Fair in 1994, before extending its stock to include modern works such as Gerald Cooper’s The Valley Farm, 1942. The gallery today specialises in contemporary paintings.


The Christie’s Givenchy sale in Monaco was a par- ticular success. The couturier had devoted 15 years to decorating his Paris apartment in 18th century taste; he preferred the Baroque magnificence of the early years of the century and had acquired many pieces of royal provenance. It was the grandest furniture sale in many years and attracted acquisitive millionaires. Muhammad Mahdi al-Tajir, former Emirati ambas- sador to London and silver collector extraordinaire, paid £2,387,547 for a silver chandelier designed in the 1730s by William Kent for George II. It was a record price for silver. The sale also underscored a rise in the


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  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200