Fine Art - Mysterious young woman

The highlights included paintings by Anton Möller (€ 212,000), Rubens (€ 213,000), Caesar Boetius van Everdingen (€ 175,000) and Jan Baegert (Master of Cappenberg) with € 200,000. The 19th century was represented by works from, to name a few, Friedrich Nerly, Ferdinand Bellermann, Petrus van Schendel, Johann Baptist (Giovanni Battista) Lampi and Michael Neher (results up to € 75,000).

With a result of € 213,000, Madonna and Child by Peter Paul Rubens and workshop was one of the stars of the auction. The origins of the painting are noteworthy: it supposedly remained unfinished in Rubens’ workshop and was later completed by a colleague. An engraving as well as several copies are testimony to the popularity of this monumental composition, one which is also characterised by the intimacy between mother and child. The painting was acquired by a Russian collector (lot 1540, € 180/240,000).

Portrait of a Young Patrician from Gdansk by the East Prussian painter

Anton Möller

With a starting estimate of € 70/90,000, The Coronation of the Virgin byJan Baegert (Master of Cappenberg) was driven up to € 200,000 by the English trade following an extended bidding battle. Newly emerged from a Belgian aristocratic collection, research on the previously unknown panel depicting the coronation has been attributed by Guido de Werd to the workshop of the Wesel painter Jan Baegert and dated to between 1510 and 1520 (lot 1506, € 70/90,000).

Rediscovered only in 2002, Caesar Boetius van Everdingen’s painting Young Woman with a Black Hat Looking Over a Balustrade has long been a puzzle. The high quality, noteworthy picture has been taken on by the Dutch trade for € 175,000 (lot 1546, € 120/140,000). Portrait of a Man in Spanish Costume by the Dutch artist Anthonis Mor reached € 94,000 (lot 1522, € 80/100,000), the same result achieved by Adriaen van de Venne’s monochrome picture A Couple, Laden with Household Goods and Two Small Children, Travel Across Country, Followed by More Have-Nots, one of the popular Dutch proverb pictures of the 17th century (lot 1537, € 70/90,000).

With impressive naturalism and anatomical exactness, David de Coninck presented various animals in front of evening landscapes in the pair of paintings A Turkey, Two Dogs and Two Pigeons in Front of a Landscape A Peacock, and Two Chickens and Two Rabbits in Front of a Landscape. The paintings changed hands for € 69,000 (lot 1576, € 50/60,000).

One top lot of the 19th century works offered was the painting The Palazzo Contarini in Venice (The House of Desdemona) by Friedrich Nerly, a highly successful painter of Venetian vedute at the time with a result of € 69,000 (lot 1695, € 50/70,000). Nocturnal Vegetable and Fish Market by Petrus van Schendel from 1851 is particularly effective and an outstanding example of his ‘nocturnes’. With its sophisticated light and dark contrasts, a bidder willingly paid € 75,000 (lot1687, € 40/50,000). Fish Market in Rome from 1829 is a hitherto unknown painting by the artist Michael Neher which had been hidden for over 80 years in a private collection – it now passes into the hands of a German private collector for € 40,000 (lot 1667, € 30/35,000).

At the pinnacle of the sculpture offer, and each selling for € 33,000, were a marble Aphrodite created in Rome in around 1850 by Eduard Mayer (lot 1658, € 20/25,000), and 21 figures from Anton Sohn’s The Zizenhausen Danse Macabre, created in around 1822 (lot 1656, € 5/6,000).

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 0221/92 57 29–30

Edgar Abs
Press and public relations
Cologne, November 2021