68 23rd June 2012 international events Restaurateur serves up
■ Collection ensures competitive bidding at New York’s antiquities sales
Gabriel Berner reports £1 = $1.48
THEY may have lacked a star like the Roman marble group of Leda and the Swan, which fetched $17m (£11.5m) at Sotheby’s last December, but the latest antiquities sales in New York still enjoyed their fair share of strong prices and
competitive bidding. Offered first on June 7, Sotheby’s
(25/20/12% buyer’s premium) 79-lot sale was almost entirely made up of classical pieces, with only a small section dedicated to Egyptian and Western Asiatic antiquities. Unsurprisingly, the dominant section
accounted for all ten top lots in the sale, which went on to total $4.14m (£2.79m), with 79% selling by lot and 83% by value. Making a large contribution of $1.8m
(£1.2m) were the seven lots from the estate of Jan Mitchell, the art collector and New York restaurateur behind well- known gastronomic haunts Lüchow’s and Duchamps. The group had been on loan to The
Metropolitan Museum of Art since their acquisition in the 1960s and all found buyers well above expectations. Topping the day was a Greek marble
grave stele with the Boeotian youth Onatoridas carved in high relief, dating from around the third quarter of the 4th century BC. Found in an Athens property in 1877, the 3ft 2½in x 15¾in (97.8 x 40cm) marble piece was transferred to an English private collection before selling at Sotheby’s London in 1964, going to the Met soon after. A solid provenance with museum
pedigree always helps but can be even more important in this market than most and the marble sold to an anonymous bidder at $750,000 (£506,755), well above the $300,000-500,000 estimate. Also included in the collection was
an Apulian red-figure calyx krater from c.375-350 BC attributed to the Painter of Athens depicting a young Dionysius reclining on a couch surrounded by his followers. The pot had retained its colours well and also boasted a lengthy provenance
dating back to the early 19th century when it had been in the possession of the Dean of Durham. Measuring 16¼in (41cm), it went at $280,000 (£189,190) – double the top estimate. Lots outside the Mitchell Collection
also yielded strong bidding. One such was a finely carved marble wing from Greece dated c.5th century BC, which produced the longest battle of the day. Acquired in France during the early
1960s for an American private collection, Greek gold, wreathed in $275,000 splendour
THE pick of three lots of classic jewellery at Sotheby’s from the collection built by Jan Mitchell to complement his antiquities was this 4th century BC Greek gold wreath, left, of two olive branches bound with shoots of ribbed leaves and berries. Measuring 9½in (24cm), it took a five-times-estimate $275,000 (£185,810). It is similar to a wreath dated to the much later Hellenistic period, which took £150,000 at
the 17¾in (40cm) work was estimated at $10,000-15,000. The guide proved way off the mark when the wing finally sold at $200,000 (£135,135). There were, however, also some hefty
casualties at Sotheby’s. These included one of the potential sale stars – a Roman marble figure of the Capitoline Aphrodite originally from the collection of Thomas Hope, which was unsold at $300,000- 500,000. Also failing to get away with a
Christie’s London in April (see ATG No 2041). Other jewellery lots included a pair of
Etruscan earrings dating from the late 4th/ early 3rd century BC which almost doubled the estimate at $150,000 (£101,351) and a late 3rd/early 4th century AD Roman gold armlet decorated with small rosettes and miniature theatre masks, which went at $190,000 (£128,378) – more than six times top hopes.
bottom-estimate of $250,000 was an Egyptian limestone statue of Karo from the reign of Rameses III (1187-1156) despite a provenance dating back to the 19th century where it had been a gift to the Armenian Monastery of the Mechitharisten in Vienna. Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s
premium) hosted a larger 261-lot sale a day later at the Rockefeller Plaza. Also heavily weighted towards classical antiquities, the sale netted $7.3m
Above: an Egyptian painted votive linen, which sold at $650,000 (£439,189) at the antiquities sale at Christie’s New York on June 8.
Left: a Greek grave stele from the Jan Mitchell collection, which topped Sotheby’s antiquities sale in New York the previous day where it made $750,000 (£506,755).
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