A well-known but rarely sighted portrait by Lucian Freud is heading to auction for the first time, after hanging in a legendary Irish house in the Wicklow mountains for more than 50 years. The 1956 painting, Head of a Boy, is a tender tribute to its sitter, the late Hon. Garech Browne, wealthy Guinness heir and lifelong friend of figurative British painter Lucian Freud. Executed at the Luggala estate by a 34-year-old Freud when Browne...
More than a century after it left the royal household, five years after Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, a travelling mahogany bed used by the monarch has been acquired by Historic Royal Palaces (HRP). The relic is set to feature at a May exhibition marking the bicentenary of the Queen’s birth. Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge, from Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, described the collapsible single bed as a ‘heavy and sturdy’ item. Made...
The notorious Banksy strikes again. Season’s Greetings, which appeared on the side of a nondescript garage in Port Talbot just before Christmas in 2018, has been sold to a private dealer for a six-figure sum. About 20,000 people are thought to have made their way to visit the anonymous street artist’s latest mural since it was discovered in the Welsh town, but the graffiti now belongs to Essex-based Banksy expert John Brandler. After finding himself...
Watches by Patek Philippe dominated sales at GWS Auctions’ Luxury Timepieces and Master Jewelry Pieces auction in January. Top of the auction list at the California event was a Gubelin Travel Time Limited Edition 150th Anniversary 18K Yellow Gold watch, one of only 50 made. This ultra-rare wrist watch features a solid 18k yellow gold 38mm case with large crown and push buttons, see-through sapphire exhibition case back, Swiss handmade manual wind movement with two...
After 142 years on New Bond Street, one of London’s oldest commercial art galleries, The Fine Art Society, is marking a new chapter by offering over 300 works in a Sotheby’s auction taking place in February 2019. The sale on 5 February 2019 will see pieces by some of the most distinguished artists of the last 150 years go under the hammer. Perhaps most significant is James McNeill Whistler—one of the first and most celebrated...
A rare oil sketch by Rembrandt, Study of a Head of a Young Man (c.1650), sold for £9,480,800 at Sotheby’s Old Masters Evening Sale on 5 December. Appearing on the market for the first time in 60 years, the 17th-century masterpiece left its estimate of £6-8 million far behind at Sotheby’s London auction house. A touching portrait of Christ, the painting until recently hung in the Dutch master’s house in Amsterdam. Interest in the work...
A week of impressive Russian art sales at Sotheby’s concluded on Wednesday (28 November 2018), realising a combined total of £23 million. All three sales reached totals above their pre-sale estimates, but the Russian Pictures sale alone raised £13.4 million and set two artist records. The first, for Konstantin Makovsky—whose epic canvas Blind Man’s Bluff (c.1839-1915) sold for £4.3 million. The second, for Georgian primitive painter, Niko Pirosmani. Georgian Woman Wearing A Lechaki tripled its...
Experts believe they have found Rembrandt’s fingerprints while examining and restoring a rare oil sketch by the Dutch master. The prints, which were pressed into wet paint, are impressions of the artist’s thumb. They were found hidden underneath overpaint and darkened varnish layers. Study of a Head of a Young Man (c.1650), the painting in question, will be the highlight of the upcoming Old Masters Evening Sale held by Sotheby’s on 5 December. The 17th-century...
Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction concluded in New York with an increase of 16.9 percent over the same sale in 2017. The auction was led by Gerhard Richter’s extraordinary Abstraktes Bild (1987)—which sold for $32 million. Measuring over 100 inches in both height and weight, only five of the 18 works from this period in Richter’s career remain in private hands. After the contemporary art auction on 14 November, Sotheby’s now holds the top five...
Unseen by the public for two centuries, Marie Antoinette’s diamonds and pearls went under Sotheby’s hammer as part of one of the most important royal jewellery collections ever to come to auction. The auction took place in the Swiss city of Geneva on Thursday 15 November and, out of more than 100 lots, included 10 breathtaking treasures that belonged to the ill-fated Queen of France. The major collection—held by the Italian royal House of Bourbon-Parma...
