Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

The Historic Houses Association and Sotheby’s announced that the 2014 Restoration Award has been given to Norton Conyers, near Ripon, North Yorkshire, home of Sir James and Lady Graham. The late medieval house, extensively rebuilt in the 17th century, has been the home of the Graham family since 1624. It is perhaps most famous for being an inspiration for Thornfield Hall in Charlotte Brontë’s celebrated novel Jane Eyre. The novelist is believed to have visited Norton Conyers in 1839 and the family legend of a “madwoman” secretly confined to an attic room might have given her the idea for the crazed Mrs Rochester.

Sir James and Lady Graham, a former museum curator, began the restoration of Norton Conyers in 2006. Their assiduous work over the past eight years revealed fascinating layers of history, which visitors will be able to discover in July 2015, when this Graded II-listed house reopens to the public.

On 11 and 12 December 2014 Sotheby’s New York will present 175 Masterworks To Celebrate 175 Years Of Photography: Property from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, a single owner sale of the most significant collection of photographs in private hands today. The works to be offered date from photography’s earliest years in the 1840s to contemporary 21st Century color images and include major photographs from all of the medium’s most important practitioners including: Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Gustave Le Gray, Irving Penn, August Sander, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston, among others. The collection was meticulously put together over decades by Howard Stein (1926-2011), one of photography’s greatest collectors, whose vision and keen understanding of the medium informed his purchases. Mr. Stein donated the collection to the Joy of Giving Something Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the photographic arts, which is the sole beneficiary of the sale. Highlights will be shown in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Paris prior to the full exhibition in New York. The pre-sale estimate of $13/20 million is the highest ever for a Photographs auction.

In early May, Christie's invited a group of 18 new collectors from China to visit New York. The auction house escorted the guests on guided tours through the Museum of Modern Art, arranged VIP tickets to a local art fair and threw a lavish dinner in the Rockefeller Center ballroom of Christie's. Auctioneers also reserved two discreet skyboxes overlooking the house's saleroom so the group could watch its major spring sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art.

Christie's efforts paid off: During its May 13 contemporary art sale, members of the group placed bids on at least half the top 10 priciest pieces in what became an historic, $745 million auction.

Records tumbled this season in the highest-grossing flagship summer auctions that Sotheby’s London has ever seen. Together, sales in the four key categories of Old Masters, Impressionist & Modern, Contemporary Art and ‘Treasures’ totalled a record £360 million - with top estimates repeatedly smashed and record numbers of participants engaging in the sales.

The strong results were fuelled by a burgeoning interest from collectors from the new markets - many of whom are making their presence ever more strongly felt in Sotheby’s London salerooms, their interest constantly expanding into an ever broader range of fields.

The art market is still crackling. Christie's International PLC said Tuesday it sold $4.5 billion of fine and decorative art during the first half of the year, up 22% from the same period a year ago—and representing a record high for the privately held company based in London. Christie's total included $3.6 billion in auction sales and $828 million in privately brokered art sales. Its private sales were up 16% compared with the first half of 2013.

Rival Sotheby's said it auctioned $3.3 billion in art during the first half, up 29.4% from the year before. The New York-based auctioneer will release consolidated totals next month.

She’s back.

Sotheby’s is offering a portrait of Roman noblewoman Lucretia, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, in a private-sales exhibition at its Bond Street, London, salesroom. If the bare-breasted lady looks familiar, she is. The circa-1509 painting was last offered at Sotheby’s in New York quite recently, in January 2012. It sold for $5.122 million, the fourth highest price ever paid for a Cranach at auction. (The record, $8.6 million, was set in 1990.)

In 2012, the painting in the “Important Old Masters Sale” was given quite the white-gloved hard sell. A video of department chairman George Wachter praised her voluptuousness and noted that museums were likely to be interested. It sold in the midrange of its $4 million to $6 million estimate (outpaced only by a Caneletto Venice scene.)  The sale sheet listed as going to a “European private” in an auction that was only 59.7 percent sold.

Convinced that consumers are finally ready to shop online for Picassos and choice Persian rugs in addition to car parts and Pez dispensers, Sotheby’s, the blue-chip auction house, and eBay, the Internet shopping giant, plan to announce Monday that they have formed a partnership to stream Sotheby’s sales worldwide.

Starting this fall, most of Sotheby’s New York auctions will be broadcast live on a new section of eBay’s website. Eventually the auction house expects to extend the partnership, adding online-only sales and streamed auctions taking place anywhere from Hong Kong to Paris to London. The pairing would upend the rarefied world of art and antiques, giving eBay’s 145 million customers instant bidding access to a vast array of what Sotheby’s sells, from fine wines to watercolors by Cézanne.

Sotheby’s announced today that it will be honoured to present for sale The Henry Graves Supercomplication in Geneva on 14 November 2014. Made by Patek Philippe in 1933, this masterpiece of horology is the most famous watch in the world and the most complicated watch ever made completely by human hand. Its reappearance on the market, 15 years after its record sale, will coincide with Patek Philippe’s 175th anniversary celebrations and will be a fitting tribute to the genius of the Swiss manufacturer. The watch will be offered in Sotheby’s Geneva sale of Important Watches with an estimate in excess of CHF 15 million.

Discussing the forthcoming sale of the Henry Graves Supercomplication, Tim Bourne, Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Watches, and Daryn Schnipper, Chairman of Sotheby’s Watch Division, said: “The list of superlatives which can be attached to this icon of the 20th century is truly extraordinary. Indisputably the “Holy Grail” of watches, The Henry Graves Supercomplication combines the Renaissance ideal of the unity of beauty and craftsmanship with the apogee of science. Our offering of this horological work of art in 1999 was unquestionably the highlight of our professional careers and set a world record which has held until today. We are extremely privileged to be offering it once again.”

A self-portrait of Andy Warhol in a spiky fright wig sold for 2.9 million pounds ($4.98 million) at Phillips yesterday in London, concluding the spring auction season in Europe.

This week’s evening sales of contemporary art at Phillips, Sotheby’s (BID) and Christie’s in the U.K. capital produced a total of 202.4 million pounds, a 28 percent jump from the tally at equivalent events last year. New buyers from China and other international markets are boosting prices for top postwar and contemporary artists, as the works are being increasingly seen as strong investments.

Ever since Rachel Lambert Mellon died in March at the age of 103, the art world has been wondering what would become of the vast treasures of art and objects that she and her husband, Paul Mellon, had collected and lived with.

On Tuesday, Sotheby’s announced that it had landed the sale of the estate of Mrs. Mellon, winning it over its rival Christie’s. The auctions, starting in November, will be among the most highly anticipated sales from a fabled family collection, with more than $100 million of art, jewelry, furniture and decorative objects. Proceeds will benefit the Gerald B. Lambert Foundation, a charitable entity established by Mrs. Mellon, known as Bunny, in memory of her father. The foundation supports the Oak Spring Garden Library, Mrs. Mellon’s celebrated collection of rare books, manuscripts, works of art and artifacts relating to horticulture, landscape design and natural history.