The Ukrainian crisis may have disrupted the UK-Russia Year of Culture; it may also have prevented Sotheby's and Christie's from touring highlights of their Russian art sales to Moscow. But last month, art and money spoke louder than politics as the four London auctioneers, Bonhams, Christie's, MacDougall's and Sotheby's, sold £64 million - the highest total for a series of Russian art auctions since November 2007, and the second highest ever

   

The Russian Art Market Is On Fire, the value of Russian artworks reached a record high last month at auctions of Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams and MacDougall's.   

 

Robert Falk, "Boy with a Cap", 1910-1911

According to William MacDougall, who directs MacDougall's auction house, "confidence has returned to the market after the worries about Ukraine and sanctions of the last few months, while top lots continue to do well in Russian auctions". MacDougall's auction of more than six hundred pieces on June 4 fetched £10.3 million. The most sought-after paintings were pre-revolutionary. One, a 1910 canvass, "Boy with Cap" by Robert Falk, left Russia with an anonymous European collector, who got it from a Leningrad family sometime after World War II.  

 

 

Sotheby's reports that at three auctions of paintings and other works over the first week of June it realized £23.8 million - the highest result in the category since June 2008, and the third highest total in Sotheby's history. According to Frances Asquith, the head of Sotheby's Russian paintings department, the outcome "quickly dispelled any pre-sale doubts that had been raised about the market. The appetite for Russian masterpieces has never been stronger. In this market quality speaks for itself."  

Pavel Kuznetsov's "View of Bukhara" 1919

 

For the first time, Sotheby's offered a group of Soviet-era paintings held by the Russian Union of Artists. According to Asquith, there were 22 lots, which were estimated at £3.5 million. Although the sales fell short at £2.34 million, Georgy Nissky's 'Over The Snowy Fields' set a new auction record for Soviet painting - £1.8 million ($3 million) - more than double Sotheby's estimated valuation between £500,000 and £700,000. 

They came from both the Orange and Blue sides of that badly divided country. Indeed, they would come from fisticuffs in the Rada in the morning to our receptions in the evening and be best friends. This year their participation is down, as you would expect from the economic collapse and political difficulties. But they still made an appearance."

"Nearly all the Russian buying was by Russians living in Russia, rather than in the West. There was some encouraging interest and buying by Ukrainians resident in Ukraine; in the past they have been an important part of the market, so it is good to see they are still here in spite of the country's economic difficulties. Also, Moscow collectors are selling to other Moscow collectors via the London auction market; there is turnover."  

Georgy Nissky, "Over The Snowy Fields"

Christie's reports that 74% of the buyers at its auction were Russians. "We are starting to see more Russian interest in paintings", observes Sarah Mansfield at Christie's. At Sotheby's, Asquith said that 75% of the buyers were "from Russia or the CIS."

 

For the time being, all the art houses agree, the driver of price is rarity. That means that Russian painters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, from whom supply is most limited, generate the most competition among buyers, and thus the highest prices. Wealthy Russian collectors, who have already amassed as much porcelain and jewellery as they want, are moving on to a new class of what the market is calling "trophy art". "They are looking for the best in the category," Mansfield says - "the truly great pieces".

  

Supply is scarcest for some 19th century painters; even rarer still are the avant-garde painters of the decade before the revolution.

  

Two paintings by Vladimir Borovikovsky, who came from a Ukrainian Cossack family and worked between 1780 and 1825, were sold for record prices well above earlier market valuations. The portrait of Countess Kusheleva had been estimated at £70,000; it went for £3 million.

A second painting, a portrait of Prince Petr Lopukhin, fetched £2.2 million; the pre-auction estimate was £60,000. Three other portraits of Kushelev or Lopukhin family members by Borovikovsky sold for a total of £2.8 million.

  

Borovikovsky's reputation as a portrait painter was established in the St. Petersburg aristocracy, and reportedly 400 of his portraits have survived. Whether the price will drop as more of them appear on the market remains to be seen. For the time being, the rarity has generated intense competition among buyers.

  

"This is a masterpiece market," says Asquith. "There is strong demand for the very best Russian art across the board, right from the 19th century to the present day. This season we saw particularly fierce competition for the avant-garde collection, as works of such quality and provenance so rarely comes to market."  

Sotheby's top lot in this category was Aristarkh Lentulov's 'Children with Parasols'. Painted in 1912, it went for £2.1 million, a record for the artist. In 1974 the same work was sold by Sotheby's for £180.

Aristarkh Lentulov's 'Children with Parasols', sold for £2.1 million.  In 1974 the same work was sold for £180.

 At Sotheby's, Aivazovsky's 'Shipwreck off the Black Sea Coast', which had spent most of the 20th century in a Swedish family, managed to reach £1.7 million, below the top estimate. In 2006, Sotheby's had sold the same painting to a European collector for £814,400. An Aivazovsky view of Odessa on a moonlit night, failed to sell. His 'Sunset, Crimea' of 1865 was estimated at £90,000; it sold for £194,500.