Sleeping Giants
February 2007
INDIAN SCULPTURE
Hugo Weihe, director of Asian Art at Christie’s New York, suggests looking at Indian sculpture from the early Classical period. New money, it seems, is attracted to the flourishing contemporary segment of the market. “The earlier art perhaps requires a bit more connoisseurship,” Weihe says, “but great Buddhist and Hindu sculpture are universally beautiful and easily comprehensible, and have a spiritual aura around them.” He calls attention to Buddhist figures made in Gandhara of a blue-gray, mica-flecked schist from the first to the sixth century, and to Hindu bronzes from the Chola dynasty, late ninth to late 13th century, arguably the high point in Indian bronzes. Currently, prices range from around $1,000 for a little Gandharan piece to $1 million for an 11th century Khmer sandstone figure of Uma, which sold for $1,127,500 at Christie’s in 2004. The Royal Academy in London has just had an exhibit of some of the best Chola bronzes, which is likely to increase awareness in this category.
Long-time Asian art dealer Doris Wiener of New York agrees that Indian sculpture from the 2nd century B.C. to the 14th century A.D. is largely undervalued: “It’s gone up in comparison to itself, but percentage-wise, it doesn’t compare to Western art.”
19TH-CENTURY LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS
In “Sleeping Giants, Part One,” we cited 19th-century European painting, notably Barbizon landscapes, as possibly undervalued, especially compared to Impressionism, and we still think this is true. Polly Sartori, Sotheby’s senior director of 19th-century European art, champions in particular the works of Gustave Courbet, who in his later years was loosely associated with the Barbizon group. “He’s the true definition of a ‘sleeping giant,’ the first great Realist and one of the first truly abstract painters,” she says. “Although an acknowledged giant during his lifetime, today there are just a handful of passionate Courbet collectors worldwide.” His diverse subjects—portraits, still lifes, marines, genre paintings—all evince a truly modern approach. A major Courbet retrospective will be featured at the Metropolitan Museum and the Musée d’Orsay in 2008–09. Keep in mind, though, that prices for giants, even sleeping ones, can be big. Courbet’s highest price at auction is just under $3 million for “Portrait de Jo: La Belle Irlandaise,” which sold at Sotheby’s in 1998. The record high for a Cézanne, on the other hand, is $60.5 million.
Contemporaneous with the Barbizons and Courbet but on the other side of the channel, Victorian landscapists were holding sway, few of them household names at present. But a recent exhibition on the works of Benjamin Williams Leader (1831–1923) at Cambridge Art Gallery in Santa Monica, California, and the thriving business of New York’s Rehs Galleries Inc., which specializes in Victorian painters, suggest real value in this category.
These British landscapists often painted en plein air (a defining characteristic of the Barbizons) and were united in their enthusiasm for—and sometimes romanticizing of—the English countryside. This colorful cohort includes Leader (who, like the Barbizons, was deeply influenced by John Constable’s realistic approach to nature), Henry John Boddington, Sidney Richard Percy, Edward Charles Williams, Henry Jutsum, William Gosling, Alfred de Breanski, Henry H. Parker, Alfred A. Glendening and Albert Goodwin. Gallery owner Howard Rehs points out that you’re likely to pay one-tenth the price of an American Hudson River painting for good British Victorian landscape art.
FRENCH FURNITURE
Art fair feedback is that Art Nouveau furniture is the new black, nudging if not displacing recently hot mid-century Modernism. With so many acquisitive eyes on the 20th century, it’s time to look further back in time for some good furniture buys. And, surprisingly, this means classical French furniture. While recent big-name auctions of formal French pieces have done extremely well—for example, the Partridge and Maurice Segoura sales at Christie’s in 2006 and the Safra sale at Sotheby’s in 2004—these have been personality sales, in effect selling the taste and cachet of the owner. In the big picture, though, French furniture seems to be suffering from a degree of neglect. “Once the backbone of the Paris Biennale, this year the French furniture dealers were beginning to look like a niche market,” reports Will Strafford, head of European furniture and decorative arts at Christie’s New York. “They were significantly outnumbered by vendors of 20th-century art and furniture, by tribal and Chinese and antiquities dealers.” Strafford believes that compared to 20th-century furniture, 18th-century pieces of decent quality are a good value. For example, he says, you can get “a perfectly nice” pair of Louis XVI open armchairs for $2,000 and a Louis XV commode “even with a little floral marquetry thrown in” for $5,000 to $10,000, which is about the same price you would have paid for that commode 20 years ago. Strafford points out that French pieces are complex constructs of veneers, gilt bronze mounts, marble tops and so forth, and while you can expect repairs and perhaps some replacement parts, the fewer the better.
Hugo Weihe, director of Asian Art at Christie’s New York, suggests looking at Indian sculpture from the early Classical period. New money, it seems, is attracted to the flourishing contemporary segment of the market. “The earlier art perhaps requires a bit more connoisseurship,” Weihe says, “but great Buddhist and Hindu sculpture are universally beautiful and easily comprehensible, and have a spiritual aura around them.” He calls attention to Buddhist figures made in Gandhara of a blue-gray, mica-flecked schist from the first to the sixth century, and to Hindu bronzes from the Chola dynasty, late ninth to late 13th century, arguably the high point in Indian bronzes. Currently, prices range from around $1,000 for a little Gandharan piece to $1 million for an 11th century Khmer sandstone figure of Uma, which sold for $1,127,500 at Christie’s in 2004. The Royal Academy in London has just had an exhibit of some of the best Chola bronzes, which is likely to increase awareness in this category.
Long-time Asian art dealer Doris Wiener of New York agrees that Indian sculpture from the 2nd century B.C. to the 14th century A.D. is largely undervalued: “It’s gone up in comparison to itself, but percentage-wise, it doesn’t compare to Western art.”
19TH-CENTURY LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS
In “Sleeping Giants, Part One,” we cited 19th-century European painting, notably Barbizon landscapes, as possibly undervalued, especially compared to Impressionism, and we still think this is true. Polly Sartori, Sotheby’s senior director of 19th-century European art, champions in particular the works of Gustave Courbet, who in his later years was loosely associated with the Barbizon group. “He’s the true definition of a ‘sleeping giant,’ the first great Realist and one of the first truly abstract painters,” she says. “Although an acknowledged giant during his lifetime, today there are just a handful of passionate Courbet collectors worldwide.” His diverse subjects—portraits, still lifes, marines, genre paintings—all evince a truly modern approach. A major Courbet retrospective will be featured at the Metropolitan Museum and the Musée d’Orsay in 2008–09. Keep in mind, though, that prices for giants, even sleeping ones, can be big. Courbet’s highest price at auction is just under $3 million for “Portrait de Jo: La Belle Irlandaise,” which sold at Sotheby’s in 1998. The record high for a Cézanne, on the other hand, is $60.5 million.
Contemporaneous with the Barbizons and Courbet but on the other side of the channel, Victorian landscapists were holding sway, few of them household names at present. But a recent exhibition on the works of Benjamin Williams Leader (1831–1923) at Cambridge Art Gallery in Santa Monica, California, and the thriving business of New York’s Rehs Galleries Inc., which specializes in Victorian painters, suggest real value in this category.
These British landscapists often painted en plein air (a defining characteristic of the Barbizons) and were united in their enthusiasm for—and sometimes romanticizing of—the English countryside. This colorful cohort includes Leader (who, like the Barbizons, was deeply influenced by John Constable’s realistic approach to nature), Henry John Boddington, Sidney Richard Percy, Edward Charles Williams, Henry Jutsum, William Gosling, Alfred de Breanski, Henry H. Parker, Alfred A. Glendening and Albert Goodwin. Gallery owner Howard Rehs points out that you’re likely to pay one-tenth the price of an American Hudson River painting for good British Victorian landscape art.
FRENCH FURNITURE
Art fair feedback is that Art Nouveau furniture is the new black, nudging if not displacing recently hot mid-century Modernism. With so many acquisitive eyes on the 20th century, it’s time to look further back in time for some good furniture buys. And, surprisingly, this means classical French furniture. While recent big-name auctions of formal French pieces have done extremely well—for example, the Partridge and Maurice Segoura sales at Christie’s in 2006 and the Safra sale at Sotheby’s in 2004—these have been personality sales, in effect selling the taste and cachet of the owner. In the big picture, though, French furniture seems to be suffering from a degree of neglect. “Once the backbone of the Paris Biennale, this year the French furniture dealers were beginning to look like a niche market,” reports Will Strafford, head of European furniture and decorative arts at Christie’s New York. “They were significantly outnumbered by vendors of 20th-century art and furniture, by tribal and Chinese and antiquities dealers.” Strafford believes that compared to 20th-century furniture, 18th-century pieces of decent quality are a good value. For example, he says, you can get “a perfectly nice” pair of Louis XVI open armchairs for $2,000 and a Louis XV commode “even with a little floral marquetry thrown in” for $5,000 to $10,000, which is about the same price you would have paid for that commode 20 years ago. Strafford points out that French pieces are complex constructs of veneers, gilt bronze mounts, marble tops and so forth, and while you can expect repairs and perhaps some replacement parts, the fewer the better.
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