At $520,000, Venus Triumphs Over Old Master Drawings in New York

NEW YORK CITY

:Christie's recent sale of Old Master and Nineteenth Century drawings at Rockefeller Plaza totaled $4,206,320 in sales, with 81 percent sold in value and 71 percent sold by lot.

A total of 247 lots were offered, the top lot being François Boucher's (1703-1770) gouache "The Birth and Triumph of Venus," which sold to an anonymous buyer for $520,000.

"We are very happy with the results of the sale," commented Nicolas Schwed, international specialist head of the Old Master and Nineteenth Century drawings department, and Sara Kay, New York-based specialist of the Old Master drawings department. "The sale sold more than 80 percent in value, with good and rare artists reaching world auction records, such as Niccolo dell'Abate and Bartholomeus Spranger. We were particularly pleased with the result of the gouache by Boucher, an exceptional work that resurfaced after having been lost for 170 years.

"The fine collection of early drawings by Camille Pissarro, completed while he was in Venezuela, sold for $367,680 - three times the presale estimate. The drawings from the estate of Bernard Breslauer performed particularly well; the Campagnola Breslauer bought at the Chatsworth sale at Christie's in 1984 sold for more than four times the estimate at $144,000. As ever, here in New York, private American buyers played a large part in the proceedings, along with healthy international museum interest - and we look forward to our next sale of Old Master and Nineteenth Century drawings in Paris on March 17."

Dell'Abate's (1509-1571) "The Funeral of Mausolus, King of Halicarnassus" set a new world auction record for a drawing by the artist when it sold for $307,200 to an anonymous buyer. Also setting a new world auction record for a drawing by the artist was the $251,200 realized for Spranger's (1546-1611), "The Temptation of Adam."

Finishing at $180,000 was Johann Heinrich Füssli's - called Henry Fuseli (1747-1825) - "Meleager Implored by the Aetolians," and at $144,000, Domenica Campagnola's (1500-1564) "Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee" set a new world auction record for a drawing by the artist.

Rounding out the sale's top ten were: attributed to Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (1466/67-1516), "Saint John the Evangelist," $96,000; Pierre Puget (1620-1694), "A design for a Tabernacle for the Chapel of The Blessed Sacrament," $90,000; Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino (1591-1666), "The Nativity in a fictive frame," $78,000; Francesco Salvator Fontebasso (1707-1769), "God Confronting Cain After He Slew Abel," $78,000; and Adolph Friedrich von Menzel (1815-1905), "Four Studies of a Hedgehog," $78,000.

All sold prices include buyer's premium.