ART TREASURES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 117, 19 May 1928, Page 9

ART TREASURES.

UNDER THE HAMMER.

Sensational Sale Of Holford

Collection.

HUGE SUMS REALISED.

(Australian and N.Z. Press Association.)

LONDON, May 18

The most sensational sale in the history of art was held at Christie's, when the Dutch and Flemish pictures of the Holford collection were sold.

A sum of £530,000 had previously been obtained for the Holford art treasures and books, including £166,000 for Italian pictures in July, 1927.

The saleroom was crowded, and buyers from all parts of the world competed. The money realised to-day totalled 364,094 guineas. This is easily a record for Christie's. The bidding was at a rate of £3000 a minute. Ten thousand guineas were paid for the first lot, a small Rembrandt drawing. That sum probably covered the late Sir Robert Holford's expenditure on all his pictures. The advances in values exceeded every anticipation of experts.

Rembrandt's portrait, "Man With a Cleft Chin," measuring only "30 inches by 24 inches, sold for 40,000 guineas. Rembrandt's "Man With a Torch," realised 48,000 guineas. Five Rembrandts sold for a total of 150,000 guineas. Cuyp's "View of Dordrecht" sold for 20,000 guineas; a sketch by Rubens, "Elevation of the Cross," for 5200 guineas; Susterman's "Portrait of a Nobleman," for 12,500 guineas; Petrus Christus' "Portrait of a Man," for 14,000 guineas.

Sir William Berry closed sensational bidding at 30,000 guineas for Van Dyck's "Portrait of Abbe Scaggia." The English and Spanish pictures of the collection are to be sold to-morrow.

Another section of the late Sir George Holford's famous collection of pictures was sold at Christie's last year. It realised £166,000. The principal items and their prices were: "The Virgin and Child With Saints," by Francesco di Pesello, £16.800; "Portrait of a Gentleman," by Bartoloineo Veneto, £11,025; "St. Thomas Aquinas," by Botticelli, £10,290; and the "Lucrezia," by Lorenzo Lotto, £23,100. The last-named was bought for the National Gallery, with the assistance of the National Art Collections Fund.