Bernaerts 50!
1–2 December Live auction results
During the first of six sessions that made up the Bernaerts 50! celebration auction, 80% of the items found new homes at prices sometimes far exceeding expectations. An overview of hammer prices, excluding commissions.
50. One thousand. That was the price called for the campaign image from this prestigious auction, Victor Vasarely’s panel “Roja” (lot 28). The hammer price could not have been more appropriate. The panel doubled its estimate and confirmed the international trend that buyers are mainly interested in modern works.
Despite some impressive hammer prices for Old Masters (a work on copper by Pieter Van Lint (lot 3) fetched €33,000 and an anonymous panel depicting John the Baptist preaching (lot 2) went for €22,000), the unsold romantic tableaux by Charles Verlat (with the exception of his ‘Jerusalem’ (lot 4), which fetched €15,000) or Alfred Stevens stood in stark contrast to the enthusiastic bidding on works from the early 20th century and even more so on pieces from the post-war and contemporary periods.
The crown jewel of the auction, a touching portrait of “Mieleke Proost” by one of Belgium’s most important early 20th-century artists, Rik Wouters, fetched an impressive €390,000 (lot 16) and became the most expensive item to go under the hammer at Bernaerts this year.
Jozef Peeters’ self-portrait from 1960 (lot 23) quickly changed hands for €28,000, while the most sought-after of the three paintings by Alfons Proost on offer was ‘Hyde Park’ (lot 14), which went for €13,000, and a rather late “Intuition” by the “rediscovered” Marthe Donas (lot 22) quadrupled its estimate (lot 22) to be awarded to a buyer in the room for €13,000. An etching enhanced with watercolour by Alechinsky (lot 25) sold for €16,000, slightly more than the bid for an impressive silkscreen print by Tom Wesselmann (lot 30, reserve: €15,000).
Even more enthusiasm was shown for works from the 1980s and later. Arnulf Rainer’s raised photograph, “Löschung”, doubled its estimate (lot 37, reserve: €20,000), a typical canvas by Hermann Nitsch (lot 44) climbed to €24,000, and David Claerbout’s poetic “Breathing Bird” from 2012 (lot 43) fetched €20,000, the same amount as a charcoal drawing by Rinus Van de Velde (lot 42).
‘Think to be’, a painting by Jonathan Lasker (lot 50) fetched €32,000, while a rather small, 1984 work by the recently deceased Walter Swennen (lot 39) sold for €15,000, but it was ultimately Thierry De Cordier who silenced the room with his elaborate “Nuit cassée, étude scénographique”. After a minute-long battle on the telephone, the 2002 drawing fetched an impressive €76,000 (lot 40).
During the next two sessions, on Tuesday 2 December, there was just as much optimism on the floor.
Click here for all results. Session 2, session 3.
In addition to respectable results for the Van Gastel-Nadin collection of historical weapons (including €12,000 bid for the samurai armour (lot 189) and €7,000 for a Napoleon III helmet and cuirass of a guard cuirassier (lot 178)), two charcoal drawings by Rinus Van de Velde each fetched €17,000 (lots 498, 499), works by Kowalski also sold well (lots 450 and 452, €9,500 and €11,000 respectively), and the reverse glass paintings attributed to Floris Jespers also ended up at the top of the estimate (lots 403, 404 and 402, €14,000, €10,000 and €6,000 respectively). Furthermore, pieces by Albert Poels, Didier Vermeiren, Jan Vercruysse, Gunther Förg and Liam Gillick also changed hands quickly.
