Courtesy of Christie’s
Christie’s Old Masters evening sale in London on Tuesday set a new auction record for Canaletto, when one of his celebrated Venice views sold for £31.9 million with fees ($43.7 million).
Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day (circa 1732) had been estimated at £20 million ($27.5 million). The painting was initially guaranteed by the house and later backed by a third-party guarantee.
In a packed auction room, five bidders competed for the work—once owned by the UK’s first prime minister, Robert Walpole—driving it well past its estimate. It eventually sold to an anonymous phone bidder via Alice de Roquemaurel, Christie’s international director and head of private sales for postwar and contemporary art. The room erupted in applause when the gavel came down.
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The artist’s previous record had stood at £18.6 million with fees ($24.6 million) for Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi to the Rialto, sold at Sotheby’s London in 2005.
Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day measures 86 x 13 cm, making it larger than any other significant Canaletto work to hit the auction block over the last two decades. Christie’s made no secret of its high hopes for the painting; before the sale, the house’s King Street HQ was draped in a massive reproduction of the work.
“A couple of art advisors told me after the sale that it was so great to see a really important work soaring at auction—that’s why we have hundreds of people in the room for these sales. Last night the room was packed to the rafters,” Andrew Fletcher, Christie’s global head of Old Masters, told ARTnews. “It gives everyone a real rush, and it gives the market a real injection of energy—it’s important for that to happen publicly.”
The painting has been auctioned only twice before: first in 1751, and then in 1993, when the consignor acquired it for £7.5 million ($10.2 million) at Ader Tajan in Paris. At the time, it was the most expensive Old Masters painting ever sold in France.
The collector who consigned the work in 1993 also sold Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi to the Rialto, the work’s pendant, for what had been Canaletto’s auction record until now.
Christie’s Old Masters evening sale and the concurrent Exceptional Sale brought in a combined £60.8 million with fees ($83.6 million). Maja Markovic, Christie’s head of the Old Masters evening sale, said in a statement: “This evening represents a landmark for Christie’s London, achieving the highest sell-through rate by value in the history of our Old Masters sales (99 percent), and the strongest sell-through rate by lot since 2012 (87 percent).”
The £31.9 million result for Canaletto’s Venice view now stands as the second-highest price for an Old Masters work sold at Christie’s London, surpassed only by Rubens’s Lot and His Daughters (circa 1613), which sold for £44.8 million with fees ($61.5 million) in 2016.