A record £13.6 million Laocoön leads London's Old Masters week
Christie's and Sotheby's evening sales took roughly £77 million between them, with trophy lots soaring while the middle of the market stayed selective.
A monumental bronze Laocoön sold for £13.6 million with fees at Sotheby's in London on 1 July, against an estimate of £2 million to £3 million, the highest price ever paid for a Neoclassical sculpture at auction, according to Artforum. The Art Newspaper puts it second only among pre-Modern sculptures of any period sold at auction. The life-size bronze, cast in 1817 by Auguste-Jean Marie Carbonneaux and formerly in the collection of the writer William Beckford, drew four bidders, and Artforum reports the winner was new to the Old Masters market.
The week's totals show money concentrating at the top. Sotheby's evening sale of Old Master and 19th century paintings and sculpture made £37.8 million with fees from 45 lots offered, with 77% of lots sold, according to The Art Newspaper. Christie's equivalent sale the night before totalled £38.9 million with roughly 90% of lots sold, led by Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of the Duke of Wellington at £9.7 million; two Jan van Huysum still lifes made £6.5 million and £5.5 million, bought by the same collector, while a Canaletto estimated at £4 million to £6 million was withdrawn before the sale.
The pattern mirrors the wider art market: genuine competition for fresh, storied trophies and selectivity everywhere else. Dealers read the week both ways. 'Collectors are starting to see that Old Masters are still very cheap,' dealer Salomon Lilian told The Art Newspaper, while dealer Charles Beddington called it 'an odd market' that is 'so unpredictable at the moment'. A sculpture record set by a first-time Old Masters buyer suggests the category is drawing money from newer collecting fields.
What to watch is whether provenance-rich sculpture keeps outperforming its estimates, and whether the new money visible in these rooms returns for the winter Old Masters sales in London and New York.
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