Claude Monet- $85 million at Christie’s
To no one’s surprise, the big news in the art world is the successful result of the round of sales from the estate of David and Peggy Rockefeller. With fine quality artwork and fairly good quality furniture and decorative arts, most of it acquired in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s as the couple furnished their homes in New York City and nearby country, it was not only equipped with excellent provenance, but for purposes of the trade, fresh to the market.
Not, mind you, that the trade was in evidence other than in body at the salesroom- very nearly everything was knocked down to private buyers who found a Rockefeller provenance enough reason to pay shall we say a handsome price for very nearly every lot in this compendious sale. With all that, the trade press has been replete with arguments about the favor period material is now finding, witness the success of same at this recent series.
From their lips to God’s ears. I am reminded of so many sales over the years, with burgeoning collections that made huge prices at auction, only to have very many of those pieces then finding their way sooner rather than later back into the salesrooms, and commanding on resale a bare fraction of what had been paid sometimes as little as 6 months before. Buying frenzy, enhanced by the successful marketing efforts of the long purses of the major salesrooms, renders after a very short time very many cases of buyer’s remorse.
Still, anything that raises the profile of the fine and decorative arts- particularly those periods though well-established in the canon but overlooked by the shelter publications in favor of looks like and may have come from the local Target store- is of course a good thing.