Rembrandt Is the Artist for All Seasons

You can rely on Rembrandt. The Dutch master’s painting of Saint John with the face of the artist’s son, Titus, overshadowed other lots at Sotheby’s in London. Meanwhile, at Christie’s a portrait on paper shattered the record for the artist’s prints.

His Saint John sold for nearly $9m when fees were added on December 3, while his etching, a portrait of Amsterdam’s inspector of medical colleges from the Sam Josefowitz collection of Rembrandt prints, fetched $4m the evening before.

Boosted by these two outstanding works, the auction houses’ seven sales of Old Master and later paintings, scored an impressive B on the HENI Auction Index, jumping from a disappointing D only 12 months ago.

The B score marked the strongest showing in London’s salesrooms since 2020, after nearly a decade of decline and waning interest.

There was a solid 30% rebound in the $87m total sales revenue, and 635 lots traded during the week of sales, which wrapped up on December 4. That said, both remain a third below the typical $140m of revenue generated and 1,000 works traded in comparable sales in the past two decades.

There was a significant improvement in the percentages of lots selling above their low and high estimates, to levels that are respectively 12 and 5 percentage points higher than average.

At Christie’s, Gerrit Dou’s The Flute Player flew past its estimates, and guarantee, selling for just over $5m with fees. The painting by one of Rembrandt’s star students returned to auction after more than a century being passed down the generations of an aristocratic Irish family.

Previous owners may have included the Amsterdam Museum until 1828 when there is a record of its sale for a song, or rather 349 florins. You could rent a modest home in Amsterdam for 15–25 florins a month at that time.

Rembrandt’s painting Saint John on Patmos also had a guarantee and sold for 35% above its low estimate. In 1929, it was purchased by the German iron, coal and steel billionaire Friederich “Fritz” Thyssen and passed down by descent through the dynasty until his heirs consigned it to auction.

While the Dutch artist took center stage, a work by an anonymous artist active in Brussels in the 15th century played a supporting role. The Master of the Sherborne Almshouse Triptych, which depicts the five miracles of Christ, made its auction debut. Also backed by a guarantee, it sold for $7.5m with fees at Sotheby’s.

The painting survived the Puritan iconoclasts of the English Reformation and English Civil War. its outer shutters were painted as if it was plain wood and so hidden from vandals eager to smash all symbols of popery.

The average hammer to mid-estimate ratio, another of the more than ten metrics of the HENI Auction Index, improved from 1.2 to 1.4, in line now with the average in past comparable sales.

Works by the pioneering Italian female artist Artemisia Gentileschi are in-demand but in London, Gentileschi's A Woman Presenting her Child to Saint Blaise, which had a $529,700 to $794,500 estimate, failed to find a buyer at Christie’s, however.

Even so the percentage of lots bought-in stayed at 19, the lowest level since 2008. The percentage of lots withdrawn before they were due to be sold also remained low.

For the auction houses, the rebound will be welcome news. The sales had begun to look like the poor relations after the glitzy November sales in New York. Not this year.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here

Note: the combined score for the week is not an average of Christie's and Sotheby's individual scores because it considers the joint performance of all lots traded at the auction houses taken together versus their pooled performance in the past. The split between Sotheby's and Christie's changes each year in this “pooled set” and, therefore, its score is not a simple weighted average of the two houses' individual scores.