2021 Old Masters market review

While most art fairs for Old Masters were cancelled or taken online in 2021, auction houses generally stuck with their in-person sales calendar and got creative at selling online. At a glance the numbers indicate success: the sale of Old Master paintings achieved 279 million USD, a 16.4% increase from 2019; however, 33% of this figure is accounted for by the 92.2 million USD Botticelli portrait sold at Sotheby’s New York in January, discussed in our previous market report.

The big question we asked ourselves was what does it mean to be ‘fresh’ to the market? Along with the artist’s fame and condition, freshness is one of the pillars for pricing an artwork. One can reasonably expect there to be a difference in what is considered ‘fresh’ for an Old Master as opposed to a living artist. Focusing on the top 10 auction prices for Old Master paintings in 2021, our market researcher Oliver Rordorf looked into how long each work had been held in the same collection before being sold this time round. For works last sold at auction within the past 50 years, we calculated the compound annual growth rate. Check out the details below.

Based on what the auction houses published, we found that on average, the Top 10 works have remained in the same collection for 65.4 years – the longest being 171 and shortest 22. Notably, 7 of the top 10 artworks set new auction records for the artist,  some more unexpectedly than others.

The picture that remained in the same family collection for the longest time, 171 years, was Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Philosopher Reading that emerged, covered in dust, in a country estate in France. Rapidly painted with swathes of impastoed color, this newly discovered Fragonard oval relates to The Philospher, ca. 1764, in the Hamburg Kunsthalle as well as his ‘Fantasy figures’ – imaginary character studies he began to paint around 1769. Such works have been in great demand over the last thirty years, which one can credit to Pierre Rosenberg’s 1988 Fragonard exhibition at the Louvre and the Met for establishing his reputation as a provocateur and a precursor of modernism: notable for the material quality of the brushstroke, the performative gesture and the spontaneity of expression. The painting sold for 7,700,000 EUR (est. 1,500,000 – 2,000,000 EUR) through Enchères-Champange in Épernay, which, like dozens of other smaller provincial French auction companies conduct their sales through the Hôtel Drouot in Paris.

A trend that we continue to observe is that more female artist names are being taken into consideration on the discovery front. This heightened awareness of the ‘second sex’ is in line with curatorial programming around the world. This year, By Her Hand, the first exhibition solely dedicated to Italian women artists opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. Curated by Oliver Tostmann and Eve Straussman-Plfanzer, the show celebrates the contribution of women to the history of art. Exhibitions like Titian’s Vision of Women at the Kunsthistorisches Museum re-examined the patriarch’s oeuvre through the lens that focuses on the depiction of women, while the Poesie at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, reunited a celebrated group of erotic Ovidian themes painted by Titian for King Philip II of Spain. The wall notes referenced the subject matter which some viewers might now find offensive.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art announced the acquisition of Juan de Pareja’s Dog with candle and lilies. Pareja’s complex journey from an enslaved assistant to Velázquez to a respected independent artist provides this painting with an intriguing story. Although this painting is a fragment of a larger composition of Saint Domenic, it is a skillfully and attractively painted example of the artist’s work.

An early work by Jusepe de Ribera, Susanna and the Elders, was purchased by the San Diego Art Museum. The museum has another later painting by Ribera depicting Saint Bartholomew. In the early stages of his career, Ribera demonstrated the most affinity to Caravaggio. Perhaps visitors to the museum can now better appreciate Ribera’s artistic development.

The Princeton University Art Museum acquired The Abduction of Ganymede by Sir Peter Paul Rubens from Sotheby’s December Old Masters Evening sale for 716,800 GBP. This oil sketch which is preliminary for Ruben’s larger canvas in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid comes from the collection of the renowned opera director Sir Peter Jonas. The work will compliment another oil sketch by the artist in the university’s holdings, The Death of Adonis.