Henri Gervex painted Yachting in the Archipelago in 1898, while a guest on board the magnificent yacht, Namouna, belonging to Gordon Bennett, the owner of the New York Herald and an international media entrepreneur. Bennett, who is probably depicted as the gentleman in white suit, leaning against the cabin in the posture of Captain of his vessel, moved frequently between New York and Paris.
These velvety lines, describing a lush portrait by a fashionable French Salon painter little remembered today, seem perfectly to capture the languid elegance of so many 19th Century European paintings. For here is a field of collecting that seems almost hopelessly dated and old-fashioned in today’s hopped-up and contemporary-crazed art market.
And yet the paintings in this genre are often breathtaking in terms of draftsmanship and color, drama and social history. One looks at Yachting in the Archipelago with a sense of vicarious wonder at a lifestyle that appears almost impossibly elegant, plush and cossetted. The yacht’s owner has catered to his guests every need and comfort, even ordering the canvas panels to be rolled to the edge of the overhead tarpaulin so as to protect his guests, in all their silk finery, from wind and sun.
This alluring slice of social history appeared in a sale last month at Sotheby’s of 19th Century European Art. As with so many auction sales these days in what we might call The New Art Market, this one was online-only. That meant the sale was displayed on Sotheby’s website for a period of several days, during which bids could be posted electronically at any hour of the day.
On the very last day of the sale, and indeed in the final minutes, each lot was “closed,” minute by minute. A red bar would suddenly appear, like a horizontal thermometer, showing that two minutes remained in the bidding. In the case of Yachting in the Archipelago, which carried an estimate of $300,000-400,000, the bidding-thermometer quickly drained and it sold for $403,200.
The sale overall included all the disparate styles and schools of 19th Century European art—encompassing, for example, fleshy portraits of nymphs and maidens by William Bouguereau; moody Scandinavian interiors showing a figure with back turned mysteriously to the viewer; all manner of fanciful bronzes and marble busts; and oddities like duck paintings by Alexander Koester. The sale also included the obligatory portrait of a haughty couple in dazzling dress by James Tissot—in this case one entitled The Proposal, which fetched an impressive $1,045,500, the highest price of the sale.
As I have long been fascinated with this collecting niche, I tuned in for the closing minutes of the sale to see how things were going. I didn’t expect much, and I was hardly surprised that several of the highest-estimated works went unsold, which has always been a hallmark of these sales, where bidders seem almost ghostly.
But to my surprise the sale ended with a startling result.
One of the very last lots was a moody and expansive oil painting dated 1882 by a British artist I had never heard of named Owen Dalziel. Remarkably, Dalziel lived from 1860 to 1960—from the reign of Queen Victoria to the age of Sputnik. He was prolific, and he seems to have enjoyed a long if not glorious career as a working artist.
The painting in question, entitled Fish Market at Yarmouth, carried a modest estimate of $4,000-6,000, perhaps signifying its unimportance in such grand company as Henri Gervex and his flamboyant Yachting in the Archipelago. The painting depicted haggard-looking fisherman assembled around the day’s catch, wearily awaiting its sale by an auctioneer front and center in the picture, with the fishing boats in the background adding color and essence to the proceedings.
Though perhaps drab and a bit dreary, the painting seemed to me oddly mesmerizing. Indeed, it was also bursting with drama, suspense and narrative power. How far removed in mood from Yachting on the Archipelago!
And so the red time-bar appeared below the painting to signify that bidding was closing on this lot. But as I watched, the red time-bar kept draining and refilling, over and over again. This went on for many minutes. Quietly, invisible bidders were driving the price of this modest painting sky high!
Finally, the red bar drained and the sale ended. The price: $277,200, some forty-six times the high estimate.
I immediately reached out to Sotheby’s for a comment. A specialist in the 19th Century European Paintings Department named Madalina Lazen kindly replied: “The sale of lot 259 took us by surprise as well. I can only speculate that there is a demand for paintings of auctions and markets of any kind because they capture a moment in time. The fish auction was particularly interesting due to its unvarnished realism.”
How perfect the word “unvarnished” seemed in describing this painting, surely Owen Dalziel’s masterpiece. It was the star of the entire sale!
How thrilling to see such excitement and bidding zeal in a field of collecting so otherwise sleepy, fading and nearly forgotten.