NEW YORK, NY.- Today’s sales of European Art and Master Paintings at Sotheby’s New York together achieved $23.4 million, with more than 180 works sold over the course of the day’s auctions. Below is a look at some of the highlights that drove these results:

EUROPEAN ART
Auction Total $13.6 Million
Mark Buck, Co-Head of Sotheby’s European Art Sales in New York, commented: “We are incredibly pleased with the results of today’s sale, which saw varied and energetic bidding from private collectors and institutions around the world. Our results demonstrate the market’s enthusiasm for museum-quality, fresh-to-market material – as was the case for Bouguereau’s Les quatre saisons, which had been passed down through generations of the same family for more than 150 years and sold well over its estimate after being chased by bidders on three continents.”

Seth Armitage, Co-Head of Sotheby’s European Art Sales in New York, added: “There was intense competition for masterpieces with storied American provenance, including Émile Renouf’s The Helping Hand and Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s The Procession of the Bull Apis, which formerly hung together at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. We also saw strong interest for Barbizon painting, including Camille Corot’s La gelée blanche à Auvers-sur-Oise, which soared eight-times past its high estimate and had at least ten bidders competing for the work.”

Top prices from today’s sale demonstrated strength for works by William Bouguereau, with six of his paintings together totaling $4.6 million. The group was led by Bouguereau’s 1884 canvas, La bourrique (The Pony-back ride), which sold for $1.8 million to benefit the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Painted during the height of the artist’s commercial success, the present work is a testament to Bouguereau’s emotional and artistic intuition.

Paintings by iconic 19th-century British artists also performed well, as illustrated by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Love’s Jeweled Fetter, which sold for $639,000. A tour-de-force of 19th-century painting, and among Alma-Tadema’s most striking compositions, the present work was painted during an extraordinary period for the artist and the same year that he presented Spring (1894, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) at the Royal Academy.

MASTER PAINTINGS
Auction Total $9.8 Million
Christopher Apostle, Head of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department in New York, commented: “The success of property emerging from both museum and private collections helped propel our sale past expectations today. We were honored to be entrusted with works from institutions including The San Diego Museum of Art, The Berkshire Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and are thrilled to have delivered strong results on their behalf. There was tremendous interest and competition for works that had been tucked away in private collections, including the Jack and Eileen Feather Collection as well as the group of 24 Baroque still lifes in the manner of Caravaggio. We were very pleased to see both collections surpass their high estimates.”

The afternoon auction of Master Paintings was led by a rare, intact, portable triptych by Sienese artist Sano di Pietro, which sold for $1.6 million – more than 4.5 times its high estimate, and marking a new world auction record for the artist. Dated to circa 1450-55, this depiction of the Madonna and Christ Child, flanked by Saints John the Evangelist and Jerome, adheres faithfully to the Sienese Trecento tradition. The work was sold to benefit the European Paintings Acquisitions Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Adriaen Isenbrant’s 16th-century panel, The Flight Into Egypt, was also among the sale’s top prices, fetching $759,000 to benefit the Berkshire Musuem in Pittsfield, Massachusetts – nearly four times its high estimate. Rendered from a bird's-eye perspective with close attention to detail, the work is remarkable example of Netherlandish landscape painting.

Twenty-four Barqoue still lifes from a private collection were 100% sold, together achieving $2.2 million, above a high estimate of $2 million. The group was led by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi’s Basket of fruit on a stone ledge, which sold for $519,000 (estimate $200/300,000). Completed in the first quarter of the 17th century, the present work is both an important and evocative example of the first generation of Roman still life painting, and incorporates the lessons of Caravaggio's groundbreaking, realistic approach to the genre.

A group of 13 works from the Jack and Eileen Feather Collection also out-performed expectations, fetching $900,000 in total. The selection was led by one of a group of fantasy portraits by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo that have been dated to his years in Spain between 1762-1770: Portrait of a Young Woman Dressed as a Page, Bust-Length, which sold for $275,000.