Monday 22nd December 2014
We talk about art sales a lot. Maybe we're a bit biased since we're Gallereo, and we're trying to help you sell your work, but there is something intrinsically fascinating about seeing massive price tags on works of art. It's hard to say if it's simply that the numbers tend to be so large as to be generally outside the scope of easy comprehension (when was the last time you saw 100 million of anything and were able to fit that number comfortably in your mind?), or sheer bewildered avarice, but these numbers capture the imagination and attention like nothing else.
Cezanne, quite naturally, is one of the most famous of the European painters from the last millenium. That reputation has now been further cemented by the sale of one of his paintings by the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House for the astonishing figure of $100 million USD, which places it on the list of the most 15 expensive paintings ever sold. "La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue du bosquet du Château Noir," which was painted in 1904, features the Ste. Victoire Mountain, one of Cezanne's favourite subjects. The buyer has remained anonymous.
The most curious element about this sale, however, isn't the astonishing pricetag or the buyer's anonymity, but rather the fact that the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House didn't really need to sell it. They were in no particular financial difficulties, they simply wanted to create an endowment to ensure that they would be able to maintain the house and grounds itself. The house, for those unfamiliar with it, isn't technically a museum, but rather a historical house, and so has much less rigorous rules about divesting itself of elements of its collection. Visitors to the house, however, have expressed some major misgivings and disappointment about the sale, which has lost one of the most famous paintings in the house's collection.
The sale was brokered after three unsolicited attempts by the buyer - making it seem, in effect, that those in charge of the home simply couldn't handle having those dollar bills dangled in their faces. The house currently has an $86 million dollar operations endowment in addition to the new endowment created by the sale, making it seem like little more than a cash grab that cost the collection one of its most important pieces - quite a shame.
Posted on December 22nd 2014 on 05:07pm
