This was tentatively catalogued as “probably from the circle of Vittore Ghislandi”, called Fra Galgario (1655-1743), who trained in Venice but worked mainly in Bergamo.
Top price at the sale was the mid-estimate DM720,000 (£225,000) paid by a German private buyer for Philips Wouwerman’s Travellers Resting, 19 x 23in (49 x 58cm), previously owned by Sir Godfrey MacDonald of the Isles and Richard Green, among others.
Johann Wilhelm Schirmer’s serene south Italian riverscape, Landschaft mit Hirten (c.1840), 3ft 10in x 5ft 5in (1.16 x 1.65m), logged a record price for the artist as it sold to a German collector for DM140,000 (£43,400). Adolf von Menzel’s Vier Igel (c.1840), a small chalk study of four hedgehogs, 6 x 9in (15.3 x 22.5cm), quadrupled hopes as it sold to a foreign buyer for DM235,000 (£73,400).
A limewood Standing Saint with Book, 3ft (91cm) tall, probably from Bohemia (c.1400) and retaining much of its polychromy, though not all of it original, also sold to foreign trade for DM165,000 (£51,600), four times estimate.
Lempertz’ Modern Art sale on June 1 saw Gerhard Marcks’ 1924 Liegende Kuh, 19in x 3ft x 20in (47 x 91 x 52cm), a stately Bauhaus cow chewing its cud, sell on estimate for DM130,000 (£40,600).
Next day’s Contemporary Art produced a record price of DM1m (£312,500), double-estimate, for Joseph Beuys – paid by a Swiss collector for his offbeat plastic bronze sculpture Bett, 21 x 10 x 8in (53 x 25 x 21cm), dated 1950.
The German trade landed Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s CoBrA-like 1961 Feuerblau, 6ft 7in x 4ft 7in (2 x 1.4m), for a low-estimate DM580,000 (£221,000) at the same sale.
Art Sales at Lempertz
GERMANY: Lempertz’ Old Masters in Cologne on May 19 produced a hammer total of DM6.7m (£2.1m) and a surprise price of DM192,000 (£60,000), paid by the Italian trade against an estimate of just DM4000, for a Bildnis eines Singers, a portrait of a singer with crimson turban and coat, his left forefinger resting on a musical score, 3ft 1in x 2ft 6in (93 x 77cm).
