Christie’s Old Masters Gala Sales in London on Tuesday set a new auction record for Canaletto when his famous Venetian view was sold for £31.9 million ($43.7 million).
Venice, Bucintoro on the Ascension Day returns (around 1732) is estimated to be £20 million ($27.5 million). The painting was originally guaranteed by the house and was later supported by a third-party guarantee.
In a crowded auction room, five bidders compete for the job – a year owned by Britain’s first Prime Minister Robert Walpole, put it far beyond its estimates. It was eventually sold to anonymous phone bidders through Alice de Roquemaurel, director of Christie International and private sales director for post-war and contemporary art. The room clapped out when the mallet fell.
The artist’s previous record was £18.6 million, and the fee was ($24.6 million) Grand Canal from Balbi Palace to Rialtofor sale in Sotheby’s London in 2005.
Venice, Bucintoro on the Ascension Day returns The dimensions are 86 x 13 cm, making it bigger than any other important Canaletto work to hit the auction blocks of the past two decades. There is no secret that Christie has high hopes for the painting. Before the sale, the King Street headquarters of the house was draped with a large number of reproduction of works.
“A art consultant told me after the sale that it was great to see a very important piece soaring at auction, which is why we had hundreds of people doing these sales in the room. Last night, the room was surrounded by afters,” Andrew Fletcher, global head of Andrew Fletcher, Andrew Fletcher Artnews. “It brings real haste to everyone, it provides a real infusion of energy to the market, which is important for the importance of happening publicly.”
The painting was auctioned only twice before: first in 1751, and then in 1993, when the shipper acquired the painting for 7.5 million pounds ($10.2 million). At that time, it was the most expensive old man’s painting ever made in France.
The collector who commissioned the work in 1993 also sold it Grand Canal from Balbi Palace to Rialtothe pendant of this work is until now the auction record of Canaletto.
Christie’s Old Masters evening sales and simultaneously excellent sales brought in a total cost of £60.8 million ($83.6 million). Maja Markovic, head of sales at Old Masters Gala, said in a statement: “Tonight represents a milestone in Christie London, reaching the highest sell rate in our old Masters sales history, which is our Old Masters sales history (99%) and the highest sell rate since 2012 (87%).”
The £31.9m result of Canaletto’s Venetian landscape is now the second highest price for old masterpieces for sale in Christie London, just surpassing Rubens’s Rut and his daughter (around 1613), sold for £44.8 million in 2016, at a cost ($61.5 million).
