I buy a painting at Sotheby's Lot 47
Portrait of Suzanne le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau by Jacques-Louis David
Signed and dated 1804
The hammer comes down at £3.4M which comes to £3,801,262.50p on my bill at the end of the day. That is called being in the red, and I am told it is the most expensive painting ever sold in the field of "Continental Nineteenth Century paintings" Ha - a record, though Turner and Constable (British Paintings) have fetched more and so have the Impressionists of course. Different categories. I have a month to pay, and a not quite unjustified rumour says that I may not have bought it for stock but rather that I was bidding for a client. What strikes me most is the price differential between this painting by a great master and a not quite dissimilar work by a follower, Luise Mauduit, which really is in our own stock. Yes, David is far greater but is he 100 times better? Given all the difficulties in measuring such things and all vagaries of taste and market it seems to me that if the David is worth nearly £4 million then the Mauduit is a very great bargain at 1% of that figure. Note that there were several genuine underbidders at the price and that at least one important institution, other than the actual buyer, thought it was dead cheap but couldn't get their act together in time. So where are the buyers hammering on my door for the Mauduit? You can read more about the problem of pricing works of art by using the click.
Be that all as it may, the press were in a froth to know who the ultimate buyer actually might have been and the best grounded suggestions were The Louvre in Paris and the J.Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. Actually the Getty are no longer in Malibu since they are just moving, indeed most of the offices and paintings have already moved, to their new site right on the St.Andreas fault.
Now, nearly two weeks after the sale, (update 27th June) I can reveal that pretty Mlle le Peletier will indeed be joining them there. All is revealed.