Salerooms
Dizzy heights
Susan Moore
This summer season in London has seen exceptional objects, important discov- eries and fabulous prices. The great thrill — still — of the saleroom is that one never knows quite what will turn up next. Or how the so-called 'market' will react to it.
Who, for instance, would have guessed that a highly delectable Monet would come to the gavel in Bond Street? Not least because Daniel Wildenstein's catalogue raisonnd erroneously lists it in America. Or that it would climb to a dizzying £19.8 mil- lion? Or that a choice selection of early printed books and works of art from one of the great country-house collections of Britain would come to auction when the family had only recently sold Stubbs's `Whistlejacket' to the National Gallery by private treaty sale for a reputed £7 million+.
Few could have been surprised by the success of the Wentworth sale. But even on the night, Christie's book specialists had no idea that the first edition of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales printed in England by William Caxton in 1476 or 1477 — which they knew would far exceed its estimate of £500,000-700,000 — would fetch as much as £4.6 million, and become the most expensive printed book ever sold at auc- tion. In recent years, Caxtons have proved notoriously difficult to sell. As there was no supply to speak of, there was no market.
The Chaucer changed all that. The Can- terbury Tales is, of course, the greatest work of early English literature, the Caxton edi- tion one of the first books printed in this country. This copy is in near pristine condi- tion and all but complete. Moreover, it was also the last one remaining in private hands. So, too, was the Rockingham- Fitzwilliam — and formerly Thomas Cran- mer's — copy of Caxton's translation of The Myrrour of the Worlde, a mediaeval compendium of geography, astronomy and other sciences, and the first scientific book — and the first illustrated book — printed in English. It quadrupled its estimate to sell for over half a million. What self-respecting bibliographies could let such opportunities pass without putting up a fight? It seems the poor British Library did not really stand a chance of acquiring Wynkyn de Worde's Propytees & Medicynes of Hors, a unique copy of the first edition and re- dated by Christie's from around 1525 to around 1497.
No less interesting was the fate of the volumes that were not market rarities. A copy of Cicero's Of Old Age, in English, fetched $70,000 in New York recently; last week the price was £144,500. The eight books on offer were knocked down for £6.5 million. The results yet again demonstrate the power of a single, great and highly desirable work to generate interest in a whole group — and the effects of fresh money, notably American, in the book market. The last year and a half has seen a dramatic rise in prices, not least in scientif- ic book sales. A lot of this new money was present in bidding at Christie's, although it found little success. (The Chaucer was secured by Maggs Bros on behalf of John Paul Getty III, KBE — old money by most American standards.) All eight volumes are destined for American hands and all but one will end up in America, export licences permitting.
It was Sotheby's, however, which made arguably the most important furniture dis- covery of the decade: the only surviving piece of furniture commissioned by Queen Mary for the long-demolished Water or Thames Gallery at Hampton Court Palace. It is the only known piece made by the royal cabinet-maker William Farnborough and was convincingly attributed to the Huguenot designer Daniel Marot, the key figure in the creation of a court style for William and Mary in both Holland and England. This elaborately carved side- table, which tests suggest was originally japanned blue and gold, appears not only to confirm Marot's involvement with Hampton Court but the subtlety and sophistication of its design challenges virtu- ally all our assumptions about English fur- niture-making at the end of the 17th century.
This fascinating royal conundrum had a curious fate. It bears two inscriptions: one, in a 17th-century hand, possibly even Marot's, reads 'la Galerie Thames', the other reveals it to have been part of Cecil B. DeMille's studio prop collection. Subse- quent research found it playing a cameo role in two early films before passing into the hands of DeMille's friend G.A. Han- son, one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles, from whose estate it was recently sold — as French 18th century — and repatriated.
Not for the first time did the fanfare of auction-house publicity and considerable scholarly interest fail to translate into bid- ding action. Perhaps Sotheby's gung-ho estimate of £500,000 put people off. Cer- tainly in an age obsessed with condition, the piece was highly problematic. Not only had it been overpainted and restored, but it is not at all clear, at this stage at least, how it originally looked and whether its surface can be accurately recreated. Some may also have found its design less than satisfactory as it reveals the craftsman obviously struggling to translate a highly innovative two-dimensional design into a three- dimensional object. As the vendor was keen to see the piece go to an English museum, the reserve was dropped just before the sale to allow it to go to Peter Moore's fledgling museum at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, for £331,500. There was no underbidder.
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