Russian Art Auctions Take Off
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Russian avant-garde painter Natalia Goncharova’s “The Sailboat” sold Monday at the London auction house, Bonhams, for $3.4 million.
This was the picture’s first appearance at auction. The seller was the family of John Rothenstein, director of the Tate Gallery from 1938 to 1964. Bonhams said it was “highly likely” that he acquired the work directly from the artist. The undated painting depicts a boat emerging from a storm, and the sail is inscribed with the artist’s initials, NG1.
This week, four London auction houses seek to sell as much as $210 million of Russian works in what may be the highest-grossing week of Russian art sales in history. Bonhams said it expected to sell as much as $16.8 million in Russian paintings and rare books Monday and Tuesday.
“Goncharova’s works fetch high prices because she was a bold artist who launched out into new directions and experimented with form and color,” Zoya Harlomova, a Moscow art historian and owner of the Budapest art gallery Raritet, said. “In addition, this painting’s provenance was excellent; the problem of fakes is awful on the avant-garde market, and so provenance is extremely important.”
