Fresh to the market from a private source, and untouched under glass in its original Victorian composition frame, this 23in x 3ft 5in (58 x 1.04m) oil was widely recognised by the trade as the work of Jane Vivian (19th century), a little-documented London-based painter who is listed as exhibiting five Continental views at the Royal Society of British Artists from 1869-1877.
Vivian doesn’t loom large in the
reference books – she doesn’t even rate a mention in Bénézit – and, until recently, her inoffensively decorative paintings have tended to sell solidly, if unspectacularly, in the £2000-6000 range.
However, last September an unrestored 2ft 4in x 3ft 4in (71cm x 1.02m) Vivian oil of the Doge’s Palace and the Bridge of Sighs surprised the Cranbrook auctioneers Calcutt MacLean Standen by selling to a private buyer at a sextuple- estimate £18,000 at their on-the-premises sale at The Grange, Lydd.
It was, presumably, this breakthrough price which encouraged the trade to book more than a dozen telephone lines when this similarly-sized view of Venice, right, came on the market at Bonhams. There was also plenty of interest in the room before the
hammer finally fell after a sale-topping trade bid of £13,500.
Jane Vivian – or indeed ‘Viviani’ – is a name that auctioneers will obviously have to take rather more seriously from now on.
Another five-figure bid underlines Jane Vivian as a name to notice
The well-worn cliché about everyone in the trade wanting to buy the same few pictures was certainly in evidence at the March 9 sale of British and Continental pictures at Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) at Knightsbridge when this highly commercial oil-on-canvas view of the Piazzatta, Venice, indistinctly signed Viviani, came under the hammer with a highly tempting estimate of £2000-3000.
