Peter Brueghel the Younger's The Massacre of the Innocents fetched 4.6m pds.stlg. at Sotheby's, the highest price of the summer Old Master season.

We have seen in recent weeks that the impressionist, contemporary and modern art markets in London and New York have not fared too well (down as much as 72% according to one analyst) as a result of a brutal world economy and relatively minor offerings. Such is not the case with the Old Master market. In fact, it’s just the opposite. While the Impressionists & Co. take a heady dive, the OMs, as witnessed in the recent series of sales in London, are going in the other direction.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s posted combined sales July 7^th & 8^th of over 56 million pounds sterling with a fairly high lots sold percentage. Sotheby’s in particular were impressive, with their sale on July 8^th taking in 36m pds. stlg., compared to 33m pds. stlg. for their summer impressionist auction, and 25m pds. stlg. for their modern and contemporary sales.

Not only did the Old Master departments not have a problem finding suitable and substantial material to offer, estimates, according to Sotheby’s department co-chairman George Gordon “are no lower than two years ago – the market has been maintained.”

The top selling Old Master this summer was Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s The Massacre of the Innocents, considered by many to be his finest version of the popular subject. Painted circa 1605-10, it sold at Sotheby’s for 4.6m pds. stlg., almost double the low estimate.

When I was in New York a couple of years ago watching, among other things, the sale of J.M.W. Turner’s Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio, which made a record $32 million at Christie’s, I was speaking with the firm’s department head about the state of the Old Master market at that time, and in particular the fact that it seemed of all markets to be less swayed by trendy buyers and burgeoning financial markets. He agreed, comparing it more to a solid, blue chip mutual fund – well, a mutual fund of two years ago, not recent months! – than a risky stock venture with potentially higher yields. It was, and still is, a much smaller, more specialised market where most of the clients are known, and price surprises remain the exception rather than the rule.

One interesting fact, however, that he did impart was that he was seeing more and more young, wealthy collectors who were active in the impressionist, modern and contemporary markets swinging over to the Old Masters. The reason, he said, was that these clients realised that they could buy masterpieces by renowned Old Masters for a fraction of what they were paying for contemporary works. In other words, they recognised, at least on a monetary level, what great value for money the Old Masters were compared to the rest of the fine art markets.

Clearly those values remain today despite the global financial crisis. Some would say it’s just reward for the skilful, labour-intensive masterworks of the Old Master period versus the split-second tantrum-inspired colour splashes that have dominated much of the 20^th century. Others would say crap and leave it at that. Either way, it’s sad that Canada wasn’t around in the 16^th century, because we might have been able to sink our hard earned dollars into a Jusepe de Paulo Riopelli rendition of Prometheus, or a Jacubo Giuliano Bushini execution of The Madonna and Child and enjoy a slow, but steady upward growth rather than the wild fluctuations of our present-day contemporary markets.

Ciao!

Tom Lamb by Leo Mol, sold for $41,000 at auction. Image courtesy of Dominion Auction Gallery, Winnipeg

He may not have been Canada’s top selling sculptor, although to be truthful he wasn’t far off the pace, but it could be argued that he was one of the most popular, particularly in the salerooms. There have not been too many occasions in recent years that the figurative work of Leo Mol failed to find a buyer at auction. And his top selling piece, a large study of Tom Lamb that fetched a hammer price of $41,000 at Dominion Auctions in Winnipeg in June 2007, certainly puts him in the top echelon of Canadian sculptural works sold at auction.

I never had the honour of meeting Leo Mol, but from all reports it seems he was a quiet and humble man who refreshingly, unlike so many of today’s artists, had little interest in money and the materialistic side of life, but rather lived for and focussed exclusively on his work.

Born Leonid Molodozhanyn in Polonne, Ukraine in 1915, Leo Mol studied at the Leningrad Academy of Arts under Manizer (1936-41), at the Kunst Academy, Berlin, and the Academy of the Arts in The Hague, The Netherlands. He came to Canada in 1948 and settled in Winnipeg, and his early work included stained glass windows and church murals. Best known for his bronze, granite and terra cotta sculptures of female nudes, figures and portrait busts in the classical tradition, Leo Mol’s many celebrity subjects included busts of the Hon. John Diefenbaker, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Pope Paul VI, and Group of Seven members A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley and A.J. Casson.

Although primarily a sculptor, Leo Mol also painted landscapes in oil and watercolour and produced several colour lithographs. Among his painting companions were members of the Group of Seven.

In 1992 the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden opened in Winnipeg featuring over 200 bronze sculptures from the artist’s personal collection. Today the garden features closer to 300 works, including paintings and pastels in an indoor gallery.

Leo Mol exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy in 1955-1970, and his work can be found in many prominent corporate and institutional collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Vatican Museum, Italy.

Leo Mol died on July 4th, 2009 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was 94 years old.

Grosvenor fair closes after 75 years

If you’re an art and antiques buff and were planning on taking in the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair next summer don’t bother. It’s been cancelled - already – even though this year’s fair has only just closed and was viewed by most participants as a success despite the current economic climate. Described by one dealer as the London art world’s Wimbledon, the Grosvenor fair has been running for 75 years. Ironically, it was founded in 1934 by a group of dealers anxious to stimulate trade during the Great Depression.

According to the fair’s sponsors, the fair is “no longer financially viable.” Not to worry say many of the world’s top dealers and regular fair participants, it was time to move on anyway. And some have wasted no time in getting their own thing going. A group of important Old Master dealers have launched their own summer event, London Master Paintings Week which ran from July 4 – 10 and featured 23 dealers.

One wonders if the omission of the word “Old” from the new fair title is an indication that the fair will eventually open up to Impressionist, modern and contemporary masters in the future. Makes sense to me.

The season is dead. Long live the season!

Although there were many big-ticket disappointments in the recent spring Canadian art season, the biggest overall contributor to the big dip in sales was undoubtedly the number of quality works on offer, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Consignors, perhaps rightly so, were reluctant to test the market with their quality works in case they ended up among the casualties. And, as you well know, in the art market we have that silly ‘rule’ that once a painting has been offered by a major salesroom and fails to sell it somehow becomes ‘soiled’ or ‘burned’, tainted with an invisible ‘it can’t be any good because it didn’t sell first time out’ brush. And what happens to these works? Well, usually they are put back on the wall and left for at least 3 to 5 years – because that’s what the rule dictates. And when it does reappear, it is to be hoped that everyone who saw it the first time will have forgotten that they saw it, or forgotten that it didn’t sell. Or, better still that the fortunes of the artist have improved considerably since the painting was first offered and now everyone wants a piece of it.

I’ve never really understood this, as I’ve personally bought many fine works over the years that have been previously offered, sometimes several times as I’ve later found out. But to me it was the first time and I was delighted to get them. And, especially for collectors who are not considering reselling for a long time, buying something that didn’t sell the first – or fifth – time around shouldn’t present a problem. Unless, of course, there is something innately wrong with the painting, and therefore it didn’t sell for a very good reason other than too high an estimate, or just not a popular artist or painting.

Anyway, back to my point. It is to be hoped that consignors will see that the spring season wasn’t that bad at all, that there is still a very strong market for good quality works, and that, with the improving global economic climate, perhaps this fall might actually be a good time to sell. After all we know there really isn’t a shortage of available funds for good pieces, and we know that the market thrives on selection and, like the stock market in recent weeks buyers can only stay out of the market for so long before they get itchy feet and want to jump back in again.

So, my prognosis for the fall season – back to business as usual – I think!

Westbridge Fine Art Auction House had a small but productive session of Canadian and International art on June 21st. Strong prices were recorded for two small works by Max Bates, the best being a bid of $5462.50 for The Garden Party, 16” x 12” estimated at $3/5000. A similar sized canvas from 1970 of a Couple in Fancy Dress, fetched $3737.50. Temptation, a small ink and watercolour drawing on paper by Daphne Odjig, a popular artist in this saleroom, did well, selling within estimate at $4887.50. A large Daniel Izzard canvas, 32” x 40”, of a mountain landscape sold for $3450, and Peter Clapham Sheppard’s Silver Birches on Lake Paudash fetched an impressive $1955. Among the international works a Laszlo Neogrady winter forest scene fetched $1955.

The Garden Party by Maxwell Bates sold for $5462.50 in Westbridge's June 21st sale.

P.S.

Westbridge is actively seeking consignments of Canadian and international works of art for their fall series of live and online sales. If you have works you are considering selling, please contact us for a free and confidential market evaluation. The number to call is 604-736-1014.

Top lot of the spring auction season, Emily Carr's Wind in the Tree Tops at $2,164,500.

Jean-Paul Riopelle, $1,170,000. Tom Thomson, $1,404,000. Emily Carr, $2,164,500. Heffel’s spring fine art auction $11,338,762. Enough said!

Actually, not quite enough said. There’s really much to say about the events of June 17th at the new and spectacular Vancouver Convention Centre. Outside the centre the sun-drenched harbor and majestic north shore mountains were the perfect advertisement for Vancouver’s envious high world’s best city ranking. Inside, the power of the Heffel machine showed why this Vancouver-based auction house is the undisputed leader in the Canadian art market.

With international sales of post-war and contemporary art down a whopping 76.2% since the spring of 2008, according to London-based ArtTactic, and with both Sotheby’s and Joyner’s spring Canadian art auctions producing solid, but not spectacular results, all eyes were on the Heffel auction, June 17th, and in particular their first afternoon session of Post-War and Contemporary Canadian art. It was a strong looking sale, but were the buyers there, or would it too become a victim of the current economic crisis?

Summer Icon, a new Jack Shadbolt record at $152,100.

Despite the 4:00 pm start, the large banquet room was close to full and you could sense the tension among the audience as the first lot came on the block. It was Jack Shadbolt’s watercolour of Pender Street at Granville estimated at $10/15,000. The bidding began, it was heated, and the hammer fell at $32,500 ($38,025 with premium), a new watercolour record for the artist. Almost instantly you could feel a collective sigh of relief. You just knew from that point on that it was going to be a good sale. And it was.

By the end of the session no less than 13 records had been broken, and the saleroom’s take was $4.7 million. Twelve lots from the 79 lot sale topped the $100,000 mark, with Riopelle’s Jouet the top lot at $1,170,000, although for a moment it looked like it would not make its $1 million reserve. William Kurelek’s After the Blizzard in Manitoba sold for three times the high estimate with a hammer price of $210,000 ($245,700 with premium), and Jack Shadbolt’s Summer Icon, a 60” x 120” triptych at $130,000 hammer ($152,100) set a new oil record for the artist. Alex Colville’s Coastal Figure, 25” x 55” canvas fetched $526,500, and Jean-Philippe Dallaire’s Nu decoratif more than doubled its high estimate at $76,050.

So, the contemporary market was okay. But what about the rest of the market? Well, that too, it seems, is just fine, thank you. An evening session of 80 lots saw another 9 top the $100,000 mark and Emily Carr’s Wind in the Tree Tops shatter the artist’s existing $925,000 record with a hammer price of $1,850,000 ($2,164,500 with premium) against a $900/1.2 million estimate.

J.W. Beatty's Canoe Lake set a new record for the artist at $222,300.

Another full room saw the sale get off to a rousing start with ten of the eleven Sybil Andrews linocuts finding buyers, the best being the $70,200 paid for the seldom seen Fall of the Leaf estimated at $30/40,000. A very impressive artist’s record was set by J.W. Beatty’s Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, a large 30” x 36” canvas from 1917. Estimated at $40/60,000 it soared to an astonishing $222,300. Tom Thomson’s Birches and Cedar, Fall returned the artist to the million dollar rankings with a bid of $1,404,000 against a $600/800,000 estimate, and J.E.H. MacDonald’s Algoma Hillside from 1919 was a clear indication that powerful Group pieces are still in demand, picking up a bid of $409,500 against an $80/120,000 estimate.

There were, of course, a few disappointments in the two sessions, the biggest being the failure of Lawren Harris’s Warehouse – No. II that was bought in at $625,000, but failures occur even in the best of economies, so I am sure the saleroom isn’t too upset with this.

So, there you have it. In the throes of the worst recession since the 1930s the Canadian art market still managed to produce the seventh highest-grossing sale of all time. Not bad. Not bad at all. Not enough, unfortunately, to turn the 2008-09 year into a winning one overall, but enough to sow the seeds for a potentially healthy and active fall season.

A full report of this sale, and other spring sales will appear in the next edition of the Westbridge Art Market Report.

And now, if I may, a house plug…

Temptation by Daphne Odjig to be offered June 21st at Westbridge Auctions.

For those of you with a few dollars left over from yesterday’s sale, Westbridge Fine Art Auction House will be holding a small session of Canadian and international works of art on Sunday, June 21st at 2pm in our gallery at 1737 Fir Street in Vancouver. No million dollar paintings, I’m afraid, but nonetheless some interesting works are on offer, including two strong Maxwell Bates oils, and an early Daphne Odjig ink and watercolour drawing. We also have Canadian works by Claude Tremblay, Mildred Valley Thornton, Daniel Izzard, Robert Genn, Peter Paul Ochs, Alfred Laliberte, Carl Beam and several others.

Our international works are highlighted by two interesting mixed media pieces from contemporary Chinese artist Chua Hu, a fine Maud Squire watercolour painted in Paris in 1914, an important Ibrahim Kodra abstract, an impressive winter landscape from Laszlo Neogrady as well as works from Leon Dolice, Miguel Covarrubias, Dante Comelli, Salvador Dali, John Miller and others.

You can view the sale catalogue here, or if you wish to bid online you can do so through Artfact.com here.

Highlight of Walker's sale today is Franklin Brownell's Card Game, St. Kitts.

Canadian art market watchers will be paying particular attention to Walker’s auction today in Ottawa as 175 mid-range and collectible Canadian paintings go on the block. Highlight of the sale is an impressive figurative Caribbean scene from local favourite Franklin Brownell (1856-1946), estimated at $40/60,000. A typical forest scene from Arthur Lismer ($30/40,000) and a winter panel from A.Y. Jackson ($25/35,000) are other strong contenders for top lot. As is a late but major addition, a figurative piece Le Manteau Rouge from Jean-Paul Lemieux estimated at $30/40,000.

As news filters down through the international art marketplace about the slumping prices for contemporary art worldwide there will also likely be more interest than usual on the outcome of Heffel’s session of Post-War and Contemporary art scheduled for June 17th, in Vancouver.  It looks solid enough, but prices to date this spring have not been particularly impressive on the home front, so this sale will certainly test the current state of the Canadian market to the max – and hopefully prove that we are the exception, not the rule, by bulking the international downward trend for contemporary works.

Highlighting the sale, and providing the season’s top lot overall, is Jean-Paul Riopelle’s Jouet, a 45” x 57.5” canvas from 1953 estimated at $1/1.5 million. Alex Colville’s Coastal Figure carries a $250/300,000 estimate, while works from Paul-Emile Borduas, E.J. Hughes, Jean-Paul Lemieux, Marcelle Ferron, Jack Bush and William Kurelek round out the upper end of the sale, along with a strong selection of works from local favourite Jack Shadbolt.

Riopelle's Jouet top lot at Heffel's.

Heffel’s second session, featuring more representational and historical works, is small at just 80 pieces, but carries the usual selection of Group works and those of their more illustrious contemporaries, as well as the seemingly obligatory works from Emily Carr and Sybil Andrews. It is, in fact a Carr canvas, Wind in the Tree Tops that carries the session’s top estimate at $900/1.2 million. A Lawren Harris canvas, Warehouse – No.II is expected to sell in the $650/750,000 range, while Tom Thomson’s Birches and Cedar, Fall carries a $600/800,000 estimate.

With the world’s biggest art fair, Art Basel, now underway in Basel, Switzerland, the early reports are that prices are down – considerably – as dealers fight to beat the biggest market slump since the massive decline of 1991. The Basel fair features more than 300 international galleries who together will be offering the work of over 2500 artists.

The word is that those relatively few buyers that are present are looking for bargains, which is not surprising given the present state of the world economy, and in particular the current state of the contemporary art market. The spring contemporary art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York did not fare well. Sotheby’s posted sales of $47 million (down 87% from the same time last year) while Christie’s fared a little better with sales of $93.7 million (down 72% over last year). These depressing figures have led London-based ArtTactic to announce that the average price of contemporary art at auction has plummeted a massive 76.2% since May 2008.

One dealer at the Basel fair says prices have dropped back to 2005 levels, which is what real estate agents are saying about housing prices in Canada. Whether the contemporary art market here will follow suit remains to be seen. We should know the answer next week.

To give you an idea of just how much of a drop we are talking about, in the spring 2008 season the top seven Canadian salesrooms offered a combined total of 1850 lots. This year that total was 1430. That’s a decline of 420 lots or 22.7%. If we leave out the relatively buoyant Alberta market, the decline increases to 25.3%. That’s a quarter of the entire season missing.

Here’s the puzzle. Why were there so many fewer lots in this poor economy when everyone is crying the blues over how much they have lost in the market or how much their retirement savings have dropped or their mutual funds evaporated? We’ve been bombarded on a daily basis with the plummeting share value of major corporations, bankruptcy protection scenarios have been floating around the financial world like the bolls off the cottonwood trees on a windy day, and bailouts were being considered and implemented in so many sectors of the economy it was hard to keep track. But no one was selling their art! Doesn’t that sound odd? I mean, wouldn’t you have thought that the first thing ‘desperate’ individuals and corporations would do is unload their expensive artwork? It used to be a given – but apparently, not any more.

Very few corporate works have appeared on the market this spring, and of those that have, some I am sure were simply house cleaning and not tied into capital requirements. Which then begs the question – did the economy really hit people and businesses as hard as we have been led to believe? Speaking for myself the answer is an indefatigable yes! And I am sure I’m not alone. So then, if we are all so depressed at how much money, or business or both we have lost, why didn’t we sell some of our artwork to offset the losses? We may not have achieved prices that we were seeing at the height of the market a year and more ago, but, if we were not buyers at that time, we would almost certainly have shown – assuming our purchase was sensible in the first place – a good return on investment. Returns that would help bolster up much-depleted bank accounts.

So, the only thing that I can conclude is that most of us serious collectors value our art more than our general investment portfolios. Or we have more faith in the long term prospects for our art over the rest of our portfolio. Either way, it says a lot about how we view art, and the art market. We are, it seems, a nation of serious art collectors who would rather watch their fortunes dwindle, and their mealtimes change from foie gras to canned spam, than sell off their art collection. It’s almost on a par with that great story about the dilemma facing the starving artist in a Parisian turret. On his easel was his masterwork, and all he needed to finish it was some yellow ochre. In his larder the only food he had left was one egg. Should he eat the egg and survive or use the yolk to finish the painting…? Clearly, if he were an expatriate Canadian he would have eaten the egg.

Better still is the story of a client of mine who had purchased, with her husband, a wonderful painting several years ago. Another client had seen an image of the painting a few years later and wondered if it were available. When I contacted the client with the picture I discovered that her husband had left her, she was out of money, and was trying to raise a child without any support from the father. I thought my call was most opportune as she clearly was in need of money. I offered to purchase the painting from her at a substantial profit. To my surprise she rejected the offer. In her own words, “You can come to my house and take anything else you want, but I won’t give up the painting!”

When you love your art almost more than life itself, now that’s a passionate collector.

Where have all the paintings gone? Nowhere! They’re staying home with a nation of serious collectors. Well done!

J.W. Morrice's "Dutch Village Square" one of the many mid-range successes this spring.

The long-held belief that even in a poor economy the top works at auction would still perform well was put to the test this past week in Toronto – and faltered. With three of the country’s top salesrooms presenting their spring collections over a two day period in Toronto, no less than 12 of the top estimated lots failed to find buyers, the biggest casualty being the failure of Alex Colville’s In the Woods at Bonhams on May 25^th, estimated at $300/400,000. Granted the top lots that failed, with the exception of the Colville, will be viewed by many as not overly important works, but with the overall conservative nature of the estimates it was to be expected that many of them would still find buyers.

While many critics will be quick to claim the demise of the erstwhile buoyant Canadian art market following this week’s sales, it would be both premature and, indeed, unreasonable to do so. Premature because we still have the potential of strong prices from Heffel’s June 17^th auction in Vancouver to look forward to, and unreasonable because the overall quality and numbers offered this season were a very clear reflection of the present state of the world economy and not specifically the Canadian art market. Indeed, given the dramatically lower number of works offered this spring – Sotheby’s had only 142 lots, Joyner had one session and not two, and Bonhams actually had just 56 paintings in their sale – and the fact that the overall quality was mediocre at best as consignors with major works adopted a wait-and-see attitude towards the economy, the results were actually not that bad. Sotheby’s posted a sales total of around $3.5 million against expectations of $4/5.5 million, while Joyner had a sale in the $1.6 million range, again close to pre-sale assessments. Of course, each room was hoping (perhaps expecting) more from their sales, but the outcome was far from catastrophic.

It is also important to note that while several of the top lots failed to find buyers, the fact that each of the major rooms performed close to expectations means that many other lesser valued works must have done considerably better than expected, and this was very much the case. Sotheby’s, for example, saw a James Wilson Morrice pastel of a Dutch Village Square sell for $71,500 against a $20/30,000 estimate and a René Richard oil on board of an Artist with his Sledding Team pick up a bid of $57,000 against a $15/20,000 estimate. Joyner similarly saw Charles Pachter’s The Painted Flag fetch $37,760 against a $12/15,000 estimate while Gordon Smith’s Howe Sound found a buyer at $30,680 well above its $10/12,000 estimate.

While the Toronto market was perhaps licking its wounds after this weeks sales (this time last year Sotheby’s and Joyners produced a combined sales total of $15.3 million) the market was much more upbeat in Alberta. Back on April 19^th Levis Auctions had turned in a solid session that saw almost 84% of lots sold, and, thus far at least, also produced the top selling Canadian work of the season when Tom Thomson’s Dawn on Round Lake sold for $409,500. This past week Hodgins Art Auctions in Calgary also racked up some impressive numbers, not the least of which was the current top price of the season for a painting sold at auction in Canada, when they sold a Carl Rungius canvas of Ovis Dalli Rams for $431,250.

We won’t get the complete picture for this season until Heffel’s sale in June, however we can already predict that the Canadian art market will not be celebrating a thirteenth consecutive total annual sales gain this year. The run is over. Time to start again.

(A full report of these and other spring art auctions will appear in the next online issues of the Westbridge Art Market Report).

Check back this Thursday for the the first edition of the Westbridge Fine Art Weekly art market blog!