A Sale for Those Who Trade In Treasures

More often than not, auction houses try mightily to avoid mentioning that a dealer is a seller.When a professional unloads work, it smacks of surreptitious profiteering or soiled goods.Today, Sotheby's is reversing tradition and hosting an Old Masters sale named "The Dealer's Eye," compiled solely from the inventories of 27 dealers.

The seller of each of the 73 lots in "The Dealer's Eye" is clearly identified in the catalog. Some of the more well known dealers include London's Johnny van Haeften, Maastricht's Robert Noortman, and New York's Salander-O'Reilly.The sale, to be held this afternoon, is estimated to clear between $7.4 million and $10.5 million.

"It's an odd thing because often you're trying to hide the dealer," Sotheby's worldwide co-chairman of Old Master paintings, George Wachter, said. "But people go to them because they trust and respect them. Why not be proud of it?"

The sale features 17th-century trompe l'oeil still lifes, gouaches of the florid plumes of French military helmets, and Orientalist boudoir scenes, as well as more typical portraits, religious paintings, and landscapes by the likes of Aelbert Cuyp and Pieter de Hooch. Works were chosen by Sotheby's and vetted by a team of outside experts to assure authenticity and solid condition.

"Sotheby's didn't want to take things they didn't believe in, and they wanted to take things that would appeal to the American market," Mr. van Haeften said. Such things, he added, were more likely to be decorative than academic: to wit, "a bouquet of flowers rather than a saint with his head chopped off."

The paintings are all framed and cleaned, making them easier to move from salesroom to living room and to avoid scaring off newer collectors. "The whole concept of the dealer sale is: Hang it as it is, ready to go," Mr. Wachter said.

The paintings in the sale are all priced below $600,000. "We did want to keep it to a dull roar and make it accessible," Mr. Wachter said. Both he and dealers said estimates were set at levels that were often less than what dealers were asking in their shops.

Of course, the dealers would have sold the works at higher prices if they could have, which leads to the question of whether the sale is filled with musty goods. "It's not a fire sale," Mr. van Haeften said. "It's just things they thought they could sell well." He is consigning an early-17thcentury cabinet - decorated by Jan van Balen with scenes from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" - from his personal collection because he simply didn't have room for it at home, he said.

The sale affords the Old Master dealers, most of whom are based in Europe, the chance to market themselves to new buyers. "It's by a huge margin the best shop window," said a London dealer, Niall Hobhouse, who does not participate in art fairs or, for that matter, actually own a shop window. He also said he responded particularly well to the pitch from Sotheby's. "This is an American market that [Mr. Wachter's] department seems to have an understanding of and broader access to than even Christie's," he said.

"Nowadays the houses have turned their attention to be more of a retail operation for their clients," another London dealer, Derek Johns Jr., said. "To reach all clients, you have to participate. They are promoting our names and our goods."

Sotheby's sent out 2,000 catalogs in addition to its usual Old Masters list to collectors who more typically buy wine, jewelry, and furniture. Mr. Wachter pointed to Gerard van Spaendonck's small still life, "Black Grapes on a Marble Edge," estimated at $80,000 to $100,000. It might be just right, he observed, for someone with a vast wine cellar.

For Sotheby's, the concept sale brings not only crossover clients but also new consignors. While most of the dealers have sold through the house before, some have not, Mr. Wachter said. "I think the idea is not only to attract new buyers but to get more works consigned to them," said Julian Agnew of Agnew's in London, who decided not to participate in "The Dealer's Eye." "In the Old Master world,it's quite difficult to find things to put together in sales."

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Today's various-owner sale of Old Master Paintings at Sotheby's, estimated to bring in between $46.9 million and $65.4 million, features plenty of masterpieces - and some theater. A portrait from the Texas collection of F. Howard Walsh and Mary Fleming Walsh underwent two years of cautious cleaning by scholar Ernst van de Wetering. He reattributed it to Rembrandt last spring, and now the pristine picture of a household servant is expected to sell for between $3 million and $4 million.

A Madonna and Child terra-cotta relief by Donatello, estimated at $4 million to $6 million, has also been spruced up and stripped of layers of paint in order to be more firmly attributed to the 15th-century master. Known as the "Borromeo Madonna," it failed to sell at Sotheby's London in 1990, when it was presented as a work from the "circle of Donatello."

"It's always been attributed to Donatello," the director of European Works of Art at Sotheby's, Margaret Schwartz, said. "But we were so conservative with our cataloguing.It was after cleaning that we reattributed it to the right maker."

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Sotheby's has the Old Masters buyers more or less to itself this January, as Christie's announced late last fall that it was moving its Old Master Paintings sale to April.Traditionally, Old Masters sales have been held in New York in January, with smaller auctions in May and additional sales in London in July and December.

Christie's decision met with grumbling among European dealers who now have to fly to New York twice within four months, with a major art fair in Maastricht sandwiched in between. But fly they will, since attendance is so important to their trade. "It's a bit of a pain," Mr. van Haeften said. "But you cannot miss sales like this."

The international co-head of Old Master Paintings at Christie's, Nicholas Hall, said the January sale in New York followed too soon after December's London auction. "Inevitably there's some cannibalization if you have a sale in December and January," Mr. Hall said, adding that consignors who missed the late-fall deadline for both would have to wait until July for another chance to sell.Then there is the matter of the weather. Several dealers recalled being stuck in transit during January blizzards. (Christie's has also added an October Old Master Paintings auction to its New York calendar.)

The switch in sale timing is also due to changes within the Old Masters department at Christie's. Mr. Hall, who had been part of the London dealership Hall and Knight, joined the New York office a year and a half ago, along with Richard Knight, who stayed in London.

"When they took us on," Mr. Hall said, "one of the things [Christie's CEO] Ed Dolman liked was that there was a proven track record of Richard and I getting on, and there was a feeling that could be applied to the Old Masters department as well, where inevitably there's a certain amount of territorialism and local pride."

The highlight of the April sale is J.M.W. Turner's 1841 Venetian view "Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio," estimated to go for more than $15 million. Once it was confirmed for the April sale, Christie's announced the date change, last November. Mr. Wachter at Sotheby's has no plans to follow suit yet.

Christie's Old Master drawings sale made $2.4 million earlier in the week. Sotheby's made $4.8 million on its sale of Old Master drawings yesterday.