Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

James Murdoch, the controversial chief executive of News Corp International, has been drawn into the ongoing contract negotiations between Sotheby’s auction house and its art handlers’ labour union, Teamsters Local 814.

Murdoch was appointed to Sotheby’s board of directors in May last year. Commenting at the time, Sotheby’s chairman Michael Sovern praised Murdoch for his “impressive experiences”, “media perspectives” and “sophisticated understanding of digital media and the internet”.

The emphasis on technology now seems unfortunate: Mur­doch is the heir apparent to the multinational media conglomerate, News Corp, and is inveigled in the phone hacking scandal that enveloped the company over the summer.

The disgruntled art handling union has seized upon the connection. George Miranda, the president of Teamsters Joint Council 16, which represents more than 110,000 union members in New York, alleged that Murdoch’s position on Sotheby’s board showed: “Risk management is clearly not a priority for Sotheby’s executives or board of directors.” The statement also accused the house of “greed and dysfunction”.

Sotheby’s declined to comment, other than to say: “James Murdoch is a valued member of Sotheby’s board.”

The union timed its statement to coincide with Sotheby’s announcement of its second-quarter results on 3 August. Nonetheless, the auction house did not refer to the fallout in a conference call to shareholders.

Instead, the auction house discussed its $127.2m quarterly profit—the best in its history. The company’s president and chief executive, Bill Ruprecht, said that: “The market volatility we’ve seen around the world in other arenas has encouraged participation in our market place.”

Nonetheless, Sotheby’s share price tumbled last month as the international markets went into turmoil. The company’s stock has lost 37% of its value since 7 July, falling from $47.8 to under $30, as we went to press.

Sotheby’s (BID), the world’s largest publicly traded auctioneer of fine arts and collectibles, said second-quarter earnings rose 48 percent for its best quarter ever.

Net income was $127.2 million, or $1.81 a share, up from $86.2 million, or $1.26 a share, a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Second-quarter revenue rose 31 percent to $369.8 million.

“This is the best quarter in Sotheby’s history,” Sotheby’s Chief Executive Officer William Ruprecht said in a statement.

Six analysts polled by Bloomberg forecast profit of $1.57 a share.

The company’s sales were a record $3.4 billion in the first half of 2011. Quarterly operating expenses rose $39.4 million, or 28 percent, primarily because of higher incentive compensation costs and to new hiring and salary increases, the statement said.

“You do better, we pay more,” Ruprecht said in a conference call with investors and analysts. “We have considerable confidence in the robustness of the art market as we see it.”

Sotheby’s shares rose 22 cents to $39.94 today in New York Stock Exchange trading. They’re down 11 percent this year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is little changed in 2011.

There’s a new lockout in town.

The NFL is back in business, the NBA is still on the sidelines, and now, more than 40 art handlers at Sotheby’s are walking a picket line after management at the auction house told them not to report to work this week.

The workers, who handle Picassos, Rembrandts and other pricey artwork for the auction house, have been without a contract since the beginning of July. They got word in letters received Friday afternoon that they’d be locked out starting Monday.

“This was not an outcome Sotheby’s wanted,” a spokeswoman for the auction house said in a statement. “We have been negotiating in good faith since May and had offered a contract with attractive terms which unfortunately they did not accept.”

The move by management came as a surprise to the workers and officials at their union, Teamsters Local 814, who said they had believed that negotiations would continue. “We’ve exchanged our proposals, but we’re not even into the heart of bargaining,” said Jason Ide, the union’s president. “Clearly somebody over there made a decision they’d rather bargain with us outside walking the picket line.”

The list of the artists, writers, musicians and sundry other creative types who have lived at the Chelsea Hotel is staggering: Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Janis Joplin, Larry Rivers…

So, apparently, is the list of artworks that have disappeared from its walls over the years. Today the hotel blog Living with Legends reports that the place has been hemorrhaging artworks, whether because the artists who made them get evicted; the pieces are mistakenly thrown away; or relatives of the artists steal things. Sometimes an artwork’s disappearance is, well, just a mystery.

Recently, the hotel had perhaps its most sheepish moment yet: a painting of a nude by Akbar Padamsee that had hung above the door to its lobby sold in March, at Sotheby’s, for $1.4 million.

Now the hotel is worried that two paintings by Australian artist Brett Whiteley may end up on the block. “[A]ccording to an  anonymous tipster,” the website breathlessly reports, “several paintings were observed being carted out of the hotel last Wednesday and taken away in a van.”

Sotheby’s said it is renewing its sponsorship of Tate Britain’s contemporary-art commissions for three years -- a program that in 2008 saw Martin Creed send sprinters through the London gallery.

No figures were given for the sponsorship, which began in 2008. The yearly commission allows a sculpture to be created and later shown in Tate Britain’s columned hall. It recalls Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall installations, which Unilever backs to the tune of 2.16 million pounds ($3.5 million) over five years.

“We are very proud to be supporting Tate for the fourth year,” Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art in Europe, said in an e-mail sent by the Sotheby’s press office. It “will allow the work of a British contemporary artist to be exhibited on this international and well-known stage.”

Tate Britain Director Penelope Curtis said the name of the artist selected for 2012 -- year of the London Olympic Games -- will be announced later.

“I am delighted that Sotheby’s (BID) have chosen to continue their sponsorship of the Tate Britain commission for a further three years,” Curtis said in an e-mail sent by the Tate press office.

The last sculptor commissioned to create a work for Tate Britain’s 86-meter Duveen gallery was Fiona Banner, who showed two disused fighter jets. Her display lasted from June 2010 to January 2011.

A Gustav Klimt landscape whose provenance includes Nazi looting and murder, and finally restitution to an heir of the original owner, could fetch more than $25 million at auction this fall.

The 1915 oil-on-canvas “Litzlberg am Attersee” (Litzlberg on the Attersee) will highlight Sotheby’s (BID) evening Impressionist and modern art sale in New York on Nov. 2.

“It’s a beautiful, beautiful painting,” said Jane Kallir, director of Galerie St. Etienne in Manhattan, which gave Klimt his first U.S. exhibition in 1959. The estimate is “a conservative, very prudent starting point. I would not be surprised if it does considerably better.”

Earlier this month, the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, Austria, returned the artwork to Georges Jorisch, the grandson of Amalie Redlich, a Jewish woman who owned it until she was deported to Poland by the Nazis in 1941 and murdered. Her art collection was seized by the Gestapo and sold off.

In 1944, the Klimt appeared in the collection of the Landesgalerie Salzburg, now known as the Residenzgalerie, and later in the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art.

The painting initially belonged to Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl and his wife, Paula, who were art patrons. In 1927, part of their collection passed to Viktor’s family. “Litzlberg am Attersee” landed with Viktor’s sister, Jorisch’s grandmother.

At the world's top auction houses, sellers put paintings on the block, but it's the art handlers who actually get them there.

Handlers at Sotheby's are saying the company is trying to shortchange their role in the process by asking for concessions in their contracts. With the art handlers' union raising the specter of a strike, the two sides are set to meet Monday in an attempt to hammer out a deal, according to the union.

The contract between the handlers' union and the auction house expired at the start of the month, and they have been unable to reach a new agreement.

Sotheby's wants to offer buyouts and replace some of the unionized art handlers with nonunion labor, according to Teamsters Local 814 President Jason Ide.

The union, however, says the auction house shouldn't be asking for concessions on the heels of the second-most-profitable period in its history.

Sotheby's sales increased by 74%, to $4.8 billion, during 2010, with $161 million in net income and significant upticks in executive pay. President and Chief Executive William Ruprecht received nearly $6 million in salary, stock awards and other compensation, representing a more than 150% increase versus his 2009 package.

Mr. Ide, himself a former Sotheby's art handler, said the company's achievement should allow it to avoid asking for cuts, such as a reduction in the workweek, By not doing so it would be jeopardizing its "longstanding relationship" with the union, he said.

"They've had an amazing year and that's a testament to the success of their business, but it's also a testament to the abilities" of handlers and other employees, Mr. Ide said.

A view of Venice’s Grand Canal by Francesco Guardi sold last night for $42.7 million, the second- highest price paid at auction for an Old Master painting, as buyers selected only the best historic works.

The Guardi artist-record value of 26.7 million pounds at Sotheby’s contributed more than half of the evening’s total of 47.6 million pounds from 73 lots, of which 31.5 percent were unsold.

“There isn’t a public market for Old Masters, it’s for professionals,’’ the New York-based dealer Richard Feigen said in an interview. “Prices are far below what are being achieved for modern and contemporary works, and there are so few great things that are fresh to the market.’’

Old-Master values have struggled to keep pace with those of more fashionable works by 20th-century and living artists. Traditional paintings have a smaller pool of collectors, and while buyers still fight for museum-quality discoveries, less desirable, previously-offered works attract less demand.

The Guardi, estimated at 15 million pounds to 25 million pounds, was bought by a phone bidder represented by company’s New York-based Impressionist and modern co-chairman Charles Moffett, against lengthy competition from another phone bidder.

One of four 78-inch-wide (1.98 meter) canvases the artist painted in the late 1760s, it was rated by dealers to be the best work by Guardi to have appeared at auction since 1989, when another from the same series sold for 94.4 million French francs ($15.9 million) at Sotheby’s (BID) Monaco.

Channon Heirs

The painting was being sold by heirs of the Conservative politician Paul Channon, who died in 2007, and had never been offered at auction before. The record auction price for an Old Master is 49.5 million pounds, for Peter Paul Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents’’ at Sotheby’s London in 2002.

A panel painting of the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by the Italian artist Correggio was also a debut consignment. Described as an early work dating from about 1515, it had been in a Swiss collection for at least a century and estimated at as much as 3 million pounds.

On 6th July 2011, Sotheby’s London Old Master and British Paintings Evening Sale will offer a selection of newly discovered and important works of exceptional quality and rarity, many of which have remained in private collections for decades. Estimated to reach a total in excess of £31 million, the auction of 73 paintings, led by a monumental Venetian view painting by Francesco Guardi, will feature masterpiece works by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Correggio, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, John Constable, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Hans Schäufelein and Frans Jansz. Post.

Alex Bell, Sotheby’s Co-Chairman, Old Master Paintings, Worldwide, said: “It is unprecedented for Sotheby’s to offer in a single sale one of the greatest Venetian view paintings by Franesco Guardi, together with a newly discovered work by one of the key artists of the Italian Renaissance, Correggio, as well as two newly identified paintings by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. These works will appeal to collectors seeking museum-quality works of extraordinary provenance.”

Guardi’s Venice, a View of the Rialto Bridge, Looking North, from the Fondamenta del Carbon (pictured above, right), estimated at £15-25 million, is the centrepiece of the sale. This dramatic, atmospheric evocation of 18 th century Venice measures an impressive 115 by 199.5cm (45¼ by 78½ in) and is one of four works that Guardi painted on this grand scale, all executed in the late 1760s, which together constitute the pinnacle of his output as a painter of vedute. Generally considered to be Guardi’s greatest works, they are the first and fullest expression of the artist’s mature style. The oil on canvas has an exceptional provenance, having been sold just once since it was first acquired in Venice in 1768 by the English Grand Tourist, Chaloner Arcedeckne and then passed by inheritance from Arcedeckne until 1891. Throughout its existence, the painting has almost always hung in private. It has been on loan for a short period recently to the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House in London, but before that, has only been on show twice in its long history.

Offered at auction for the first time is an important, newly discovered work by Antonio Allegri, better known as Correggio, one of the greatest and most influential figures of the Italian High Renaissance. Executed circa 1514-15, the oil on panel Madonna and child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (pictured left), estimated at £2-3 million, provides a profound insight into the development of the young artist. It sheds new light on the extent to which Correggio was prepared to experiment with form and design and demonstrates a stylistic link between his formative years and his more mature work.

Sotheby’s is also delighted to offer for sale two newly discovered works by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. The great Flemish master’s Portrait of a Carmelite monk, head and shoulders, circa 1617-20 (pictured right) has descended through the same family for over 200 years and was previously known as the “Confesseur de Rubens”. The intense and psychologically penetrating portrait is a hitherto unknown work, which Sotheby’s has discovered to have been painted by the youthful Van Dyck during the years he worked in Rubens’ studio. Offered for sale for the first time in more than two centuries, the painting is estimated to sell for £600,000-800,000.

A Bearded Man with Hands Raised circa 1616 (pictured left) is an important oil study Van Dyck also executed while working in Rubens’ studio. Estimated at £200,000-300,000, the painting’s distinctive model helped Sotheby’s confirm the attribution to the great Flemish master. The figure is one whom Van Dyck used for a variety of sketches, some of which were used in completed paintings, including The Betrayal of Christ, located at Corsham Court.

Offered at auction for the first time, The Village Lawyer's Office of 1618 (pictured right and estimated at £800,000 to £1,200,000) is the finest example of one of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s most popular compositions. Distinguished by its large scale (73 by 105 cm) and very fine condition, the vibrant oil on panel is also, unusually for this composition, signed and dated. The subject has traditionally been called "Rent Day" and latterly "Tax-Collector's Office", but more recent scholarship has identified it as a ramshackle village lawyer's office strewn with papers. Brueghel's love of incident and delight in the textures of objects is clearly evident in the work, as is a vigorous element of caricature. There is strong evidence to suggest that this is a 17th Century satire on the perceived venality of the legal profession and the way lawyers were seen to twist and distort the law. In this respect it reads as a startlingly modern work.

An important rediscovery, John Constable’s oil on canvas Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (estimated at £500,000 - £700,000) is a dramatic and atmospheric rendering of one of the great English artist’s best known subjects. Painted in the 1830s and depicting the cathedral amidst a lightning storm, the work offers a revealing insight into Constable’s inner emotional turmoil in the latter part of his life. It has also been suggested that the artist used Salisbury Cathedral as a metaphor for the troubled status of the Church at this date, and therefore the meteorological effects under which it is presented are of great significance. The painting remained inConstable’s studio as a visual resource and treasured view until the sale following his death in 1838. The work is now offered for sale at auction for the first time in 173 years.

Sir Peter Lely’s seductive Portrait of a Young Woman and Child, as Venus and Cupid (pictured left) is almost certainly a depiction of Nell Gwynn, actress and mistress of King Charles II. Estimated at £600,000-800,000, the work was recorded in 1723 as: “Nell Gwin naked leaning on a bed, with her Child by Sr Peter Lilly. This picture was painted at the express command of K.Charles 2d nay he came to Sr Peter Lillys house to see it painted when she was naked on purpose. Aterwards this picture was at Court.” These words were written by George Vertue when he visited Buckingham House to see the collection of the courtier, John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. The painting was also recorded in the collection of King James II in 1758.

Hans Schäufelein’s double-sided, tempera and oil altarpiece panel depicts The Dormition of the Virgin (pictured right) and is estimated at £1.5–2 million. It is one of four similar works painted by Schäufelein, one of Albrecht Dürer’s three principal pupils, in Augsburg circa 1509-1510. Probably intended for a church in Augsburg, it is thought the panel came from there in the first third of the 19th century and was purchased in Munich by Pugin, the greatest architect of the Gothic revival. The panel was on loan to St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham between 1927 and 1969. Sotheby’s George Gordon, Co-Chairman, Old Master Paintings, Worldwide, said: “Large-scale altarpieces in exceptional condition by one of the most important artists of the German Renaissance are exceptionally rare at auction, and this exquisite example should provoke keen competition.”

Frans Jansz. Post’s A landscape in Brazil (pictured left) is a newly discovered work, which has remained in the same family collection for at least four generations. Estimated at £400,000 - £600,000, the oil on panel work was identified after cleaning and restoration revealed the artist’s signature. Post spent seven years between 1637 and 1644 in Brazil with the Dutch colonists under Prince Maurits. This work is believed to date from the so-called ‘fourth phase’ of his production, circa 1670, when having returned to the Netherlands he drew on his recollections of his Brazilian sojourn as inspiration to produce works for an avid collecting public.

Painted at the height of his career in Venice, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s  A Young Boy in the Costume of a Page, Head and Shoulders (pictured left) is estimated to fetch £600,000-800,000. This charismatic study of a youth was executed in the middle or latter years of the 1740s when Tiepolo, by now an artist of great renown, was engaged in a series of important commissions in Venice and the Veneto, including the magnificent frescoes of the Meeting of Cleopatra and Anthony in Palazzo Labia. The exceptional condition of the oil on canvas reveals the full range of Tiepolo’s mastery with paint. Appearing at auction for the first time, the work was, since at least the late 19th century, part of the Mumm collection in Reims.

An English School Portrait of Elizabeth I circa 1595 (estimated at £100,000-150,000) also features in the sale. The painting (pictured right) belongs to an important group of portraits adhering to what is known as the Weavers’ Company type, after a portrait in the Guildhall Art Gallery and adopts the Darnley face pattern, the most influential pattern of the reign.

A portrait of James I (pictured left) by John de Critz the Elder, sergeant painter to the King from 1605, is estimated at £80,000-120,000. The painting was presented by James I to Sir Edward Phelips, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1603-1611. Phelips was one of those appointed to examine the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and it is possible the painting may have been a gift from the King in recognition of his services during the trial and subsequent prosecution of Guy Fawkes.

Attributed to Giandomenico Tiepolo are two highly distinctive, majestic depictions of polar bears – possibly the first individual depictions of the animals in Italian art. Believed to be designed as overdoors, the spectacular pair - oils on canvas with gold ground - is estimated at £400,000-600,000.

Sotheby’s last night raised $155 million from a London auction of just 35 lots, led by a townscape by Egon Schiele that sold for an artist record.

Collectors responded to a limited supply of Impressionist and modern artworks by raising bids. The Austrian Expressionist’s 1914 canvas “Houses With Laundry (Suburb II)” was offered by the Leopold Museum, Vienna, to pay for the settlement of one of the world’s longest-running art restitution cases. It made 24.7 million pounds ($40 million).

“The supply of Impressionist and modern works is dwindling,’’ said the London-based dealer Stephen Ongpin. “That’s pushing up competition for fresh pieces that appear. Sotheby’s made the most of a tight sale.’’

Bidders are eager to buy the best works and happy to pass on others. Sotheby's (BID) selection meant only three lots were unsuccessful. The event was slimmed down from 51 lots in the equivalent sale last year. It contrasted with Tuesday’s sale of 92 works at Christie’s International, which raised 140 million pounds with a Monet work as a high-profile failure.

The Schiele was one of three works that bore third-party price guarantees. It sold to a single telephone bid from Mark Poltimore, Sotheby’s London-based head of Russian art, against the unidentified guarantor, also bidding by phone. The painting had been estimated to sell for a minimum of 22 million pounds.

The previous auction high for Schiele was the $22.4 million paid for another townscape at Christie’s International in New York in November 2006. Oils by this short-lived artist (1890- 1918) rarely come on sale, said dealers.