Christie’s New Approach to Old Masters

This weekend, Old Master paintings will dot the walls at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. A hundred years ago, the Mellons, Morgans, and Rockefellers battled for a chance to possess such early treasures. Today, while the contemporary art market rockets up, the Old Masters market just plods along.“Old Master prices have remained depressed,” said dealer Richard Feigen. “Prices are really lower than they were 15 years ago.”Tastes have changed considerably, and most of the best older works are in museum collections. But modern billionaires also prefer works by the new “masters,” the Damien Hirsts and the Maurizio Cattelans: Collecting contemporary art is considerably easier than buying artworks made hundreds of years ago.“It takes a great deal of knowledge to collect Old Masters and antiques,” said dealer Helen Constantino Fioratti, owner of L’Antiquaire & The Connoisseur, taking a break from setting up her booth at the Winter Antiques Show. “You have to go to museums and read books. For modern pieces, all you need to know is a name is hot, and you can speculate.”Even though the Old Masters currently lack buzz, the houses are competing hard for market share. Sotheby’s usually dominates the category in New York. Last January, Old Master sales at Sotheby’s totaled $31.1 million, versus $11.6 million at Christie’s. But Christie’s has since made a bid to get back in the game. Last year, the house acquired the prestigious Old Master dealer, Hall & Knight. That may sound like a rock band, but in fact Nicholas Hall and Richard Knight are highly regarded Old Master experts and former directors of London’s P & D Colnaghi Gallery.Christie’s picked up the two principals in the deal, as well as the dealer’s inventory. Both men are now international specialists for the auction house, with Mr. Hall based in New York and Mr. Knight working from London. Christie’s also took over the lease at the former New York branch of Hall & Knight, a townhouse on East 67th Street. This space is now being used as a private sale gallery, presumably a place to wine and dine special clients in an intimate setting.So far the acquisition appears to have paid off. Soon after arriving at Christie’s Hall and Knight were important players in selling that Duccio to the Metropolitan. Christie’s has also lifted its presale estimate well within range of Sotheby’s. The house says it expects its January 26 sale to fetch between $22 and $28 million; Sotheby’s is aiming for $23 to $31 million for a sequence of sales.Not surprisingly, the auction-house experts are more bullish on Old Masters than some of the dealers. “I’ve been saying the same thing for the past four or five years,” said Sotheby’s Old Master painting expert Christopher Apostle. “There is strong interest, but the market is very selective. There are deals to be had in every sale.”Christie’s new approach to its Old Masters is clear from the look of the latest catalog. “We made it bigger to really make a point,” said Christie’s Old Master expert, Anthony Crichton-Stuart, who is also a Lord, which is probably a good thing to be in the Old Master business. “It’s probably the best sale we’ve had in a decade.”Sale highlights come from three sources, including paintings owned by Denys Sutton, who edited Apollo magazine for 25 years, starting in 1962.Sutton died in 1991 and the collection has been consigned by Sutton’s beneficiary. Mr. Sutton clearly knew what he was buying. His panel “Penitent Mary Magdalene,” attributed to Filippino Lippi, is expected to sell for between $800,000 and $1.2 million.Christie’s also landed four works from the Hispanic Society, the gem of a museum in Washington Heights. Archer Milton Huntington, the lucky heir to a $150 million railroad fortune (in 1900), opted to collect art rather than follow his mogul stepfather into business, specifically 16th- and 17th-century Spanish works. He created the Society in 1904 with 23 works; four of those were recently reattributed to French and Italian artists. The Society has consigned these works to Christie’s and will use the auction proceeds to buy art.Sotheby’s experts also had a busy pre sale season. The result is five sales, counting the usual Old Master painting and drawing sale, whose lots run the gamut from Italy to France to Holland, spanning the centuries. Highlights include a Venetian canvas by Pietro Longhi, being sold by a French noble family. The scene portrays a ridotto, or casino, of the sort upper-class Venetians flocked to in the 18th century; masks were de rigueur, and so was bad behavior. The $700,000 to $900,000 price tag is peanuts for any Vegas casino mogul.One of the most interesting collections coming to market is a cache of paintings, furniture, and decorative objects from the estate of Lillian Rojtman Berkman. Mrs. Berkman owned a six-story townhouse on East 64th Street, across the street from Wildenstein & Co., and furnished it in a taste so extravagant that it makes the upcoming Trump nuptials look positively understated. The furniture is all gilt French Louis. The gigantic paintings, with elaborate gold frames, have serious wall power.Mrs. Berkman collected with her first husband, Marc Rojtman, a tractor magnate, buying vast quantities in the 1950s and 1960s,mostly from New York dealer Central Galleries. Most of what she bought appears to have reattributed since the time of purchase. The Central Galleries, which is no longer in operation, was never a premier seller of Old Masters. Yet Mrs. Berkman faithfully bought dozens of paintings that appear to have been less important than she perhaps had imagined.The sale includes works she bought as by the hand of Hals, Watteau, Guardi, Caravaggio, da Vinci, Canaletto, Van Dyck, Rubens, and Rembrandt – all of which are now listed in the catalog as “in the manner of” or “circle of” or “studio of. “To be fair to Mrs. Berkman, and the Central Gallery, in the last 50 years tremendous progress has been made in the attribution world. Experts can leap on planes to compare paintings, there are scientific tests for paint and wood panels, and information flows much more freely.Yet it raises the question: Did Mrs. Berkman – who clearly fancied herself a major collector – have a clue she was buying gray goods, even when many of the paintings came with all the requisite certificates of authenticity? Or did she prefer bargain-hunting at a second-tier gallery, searching for paintings that had power if not provenance?“Important Old Master Paintings Parts I & II” January 26 at 10 a.m. & 2 p.m. at Christie’s (20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-492-5485). Exhibition: January 22-25.“Old Master Paintings” at 10:15 a.m. & 2 p.m. January 27 at Sotheby’s (1334 York Avenue, at 71st Street, 212-606-7000). Exhibition: January 22-26.

Christie’s New Approach to Old Masters

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