From Canaletto to Basquiat, art market news from Christie’s

Source: Christie’s / Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco · Image: “Venice, the Grand Canal looking East with Santa Maria della Salute” by Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto

Christie’s Ann & Gordon Getty Collection: Volume 1 | Important Pictures and Decorative Arts, Evening Sale achieved a total $79,408,900 with 100% of the lots sold and realizing 128% hammer above low estimate. Mary Cassatt’s “Young Lady in a Loge Gazing to Right” was the top lot of the sale. The Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, Japan acquired the work for $7,489,000. A drawing by Jean-Antoine Watteau, “Three Head Studies Of A Girl Wearing A Hat”, sold for $3,420,000, more than double its low estimate of $1,500,000. A Pair of Massive Chinese Cloisonné and Champlevé Enamel Crane-Form Censers sold for more than 20 times the low estimate.

The bargain of the auction was “Saint Paul the Hermit” by Gentile da Fabriano, an important late-Gothic / early-Renaissance painter whose works rarely appear on the market. The work sold for $239,400 against a pre-sale estimate of $400,000-600,000.

Prior to the auction, another museum on the other coast of the Pacific Ocean, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, managed to acquire the most valuable work in the auction, “Venice, the Grand Canal looking East with Santa Maria della Salute”, by Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto. According to the museum, the painting “joins an exquisite group of eighteenth-century Italian pictures, including the ‘Empire of Flora’ by Canaletto’s Venetian compatriot Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, architectural capricci by his Roman rival Panini, and further works by his Guardi and Pietro Longhi held in the Legion of Honor’s collection. The painting also joins a closely related view, painted a century and a half later depicting the Grand Canal and church of the Salute: a 1908 masterpiece by Claude Monet.”

Bonnie Brennan, President, Christie’s Americas, said, “Christie’s is honored that we have been entrusted with Ann and Gordon Getty’s collection, and proud that we are able to celebrate their legendary collecting vision on our global stage. From the pre-auction private sale of Canaletto’s masterful view of Venice, to this evening’s auction, our international team has passionately done what we do best: presenting and selling major collections.”

In addition, Christie’s has announced the top lot of the 21^st Century Evening sale (November 17, 2022): “Sugar Ray Robinson” by Jean-Michel Basquiat (estimate in the region of $35,000,000). According to Christie’s, “In the painting, Sugar Ray Robinson stares out from the surface of the canvas with grimaced teeth, ready for a fight. His muscular frame is defined by his broad shoulders which nearly fill the entire width of the canvas. Arms tensed tightly by his side, gloved hands at the ready, he appears to be bracing himself to meet his opponent. Basquiat captures this sense of dynamism with his characteristic use of oilstick and acrylic paint. The image of a boxer captures the difficult position in which Basquiat found himself even at the zenith of his career, and stands as a crucial portrait from this important period of his life.”