AUCTION SURPRISE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22659, 26 August 1935, Page 10

AUCTION SURPRISE

HUNDREDS FOR PICTURE At Christie's recently a modest picture owner received a surprise. The picture—a very grimy one —of a loaf of bread, wine glasses, and rough tablecloth, was placed upon the auction easel, and somebody scornfully said: “ Five guineas.” The first lap went to 20 guineas, and there was a slow trot to 50 guineas. The company warmed up at 100 guineas, and then it was discernible (says the art critic of the Daily Telegraph) that two persons were going to test each other’s patience and stamina. Both often pretended to have made a last bid, and then would counter again. In the end the representative of Messrs Asscher and Welker defeated Mr Edward Smith at 600 guineas. I learn that this picture, which was by the Amsterdam seventeenth century painter, Willem Kalff, . was sent to Christie’s by its owner, who lives in the south-east of England, as a “Still Life in oils—date and painter unknown.” It was even unframed.

But a few weeks previously, in the sale, a superb work by Kalff — with a fine pedigree of ownership fetched 2000 guineas, and the dealers have been waiting for another, with or without a pedigree, Kalff, who could paint the brass pots and pans of a Dutchman’s household as well as any man, is represented in the Louvre, at Amsterdam, Dresden, and Vienna, and there should be some pictures by him left in the Hermitage.