| | | | | | | | Document | Sale Catalog Br-111 | |
| Auction House | Christie's -- from catalog: Mr. Christie | | Sale Location | [No.125] Pall Mall, London, England, UK | | Seller(s) | Clarke, Simon Haughton, Sir, 9th Bart.
Hibbert, George
from catalog: The United Cabinet of Sir Simon Clarke, Bart. and George Hibbert, Esq.
from auctioneer's copy: [Same] | | Lugt Number | 6431 | | No. of Painting Lots | 142 | | Notes | This much celebrated two-day sale contained some of the most important old master pictures to be seen on the market during the early part of the century, but its precise role has been misunderstood. It was devoted entirely to 142 lots of paintings -- one of which was added after the catalogue was printed -- the property of Sir Simon Clarke and George Hibbert, two prominent collectors and speculators in paintings who had acquired major works from some of the most famous continental collections to be put on sale, including the Orléans, Calonne and Gildemeester collections. They had also provided the financial backing for the dealer Michael Bryan to acquire and import a large number of paintings from the Robit sale held in Paris in 1801 (see cat. no.62), but it appears that few, if any, of the paintings from that collection are found in the present sale. Their business transactions, such as that involving the Robit collection, were often done in partnership, but their individual collections were kept distinct from each other, and it is not always clear which pictures belonged to which owner. The annotations by George Watson in the OGA copy of the catalogue record the provenance of some pictures originally bought by Hibbert, or, in one case, by Clarke, and Buchanan (Memoirs, 1824, I, pp.188, 252) specifies two more pictures belonging to Hibbert, who seems to have owned the majority. For all of these lots we have given either Clarke or Hibbert as the owner and not both. In many other instances one can trace the paintings to subsequent sales and thereby deduce which of the two owned it in 1802. Those that are still untraced have been left under both names in this Index.
The importance of the paintings was well known, and the auction attracted unusual attention, resulting also in exceedingly high prices. The auctioneer's (CL) copy indicates that virtually everything was sold, and most other annotated copies repeat the same results. However, George Watson's notes in the OGA catalogue -- which are taken from a set marked by the auctioneer for the Excise Office -- clearly show that a very large proportion of the pictures -- an astonishing 75 percent -- were in fact bought in. This is confirmed by marks in the CL copy by those lots that were not sold, and by the reappearance of many of the pictures in sales of the two collections held some decades later. The unsold pictures were knocked down to a variety of dealers, primarily Bryan and Deschamps, and this deception seems to have escaped most observers at the time. But the reasons for the poor results probably had less to do with the quality of the pictures than with unrealistic reserves set by the owners.
The highest price recorded at the sale was for the last lot, Diana Returning from the Chase by Rubens, for which Michael Bryan bid £ 1102.10. It has been acquired from the Valckenier collection in Amsterdam in 1796 and had appeared in one of Michael Bryan's sales held in 1798, but it was now the property of Simon Clarke. Like so many of the most highly touted items in the present sale, however, it was only bought in and did not reappear on the market again until put up for sale in Simon Clarke's posthumous sale in 1840, at which time it was finally sold for £640.10. (It is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.) Many of the paintings in the sale followed a similar path. Among those that did change hands, the most expensive was lot 65 on the first day, a landscape by Claude that was supposed to have come from the collection of Prince Charles-Alexandre de Lorraine. It fetched £504 and was acquired by a certain "Capt. Thompson" who is unidentified. Unfortunately the description is so lacking in detail that the painting cannot be traced. Another high price, £483, was paid by the collector Charles Hanbury-Tracy for Salvator Rosa's Pythagoras Discovered by his Fellow Citizens. (It is now in the Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth.) Other works also brought comparably impressive prices, although most of the best pieces remained unsold. (See also Wm. Roberts, Memorials of Christie's, 1897, I, p.65.) (B. Fredericksen) | | Catalog Location(s) | CL [annotations used in Sales Contents; photocopy in Provenance Index Sales Files] Auctioneer's copy, annot. with all buyers and prices. There is also one added lot.
CIL Annot. with all buyers and prices.
JPGM I Annot. with all buyers and prices. It belonged to Wm. Seguier and perhaps before that to his father David.
MMNY [photocopy in Provenance Index Sales Files] Annot. by J Galpine with most buyers and all prices, as well as the approximate dimensions. The catalogue belonged later to J.H. Anderdon.
JPGM II Annot. in pencil with buyers and prices.
OGA [photocopy in Provenance Index Sales Files] Annot. by Geo. Watson with many buyers and all prices. He has also marked the lots that were bought in and adds some comments. Watson was working from a marked set deposited by the auctioneers in the Excise Office.
EBNP Annot. with many buyers and all prices. The catalogue probably belonged to the dealer Wm. Collins, and the annotations may be his.
ISGB Annot. with some buyers, all prices and a few comments.
BIB Annot. with prices for lots 1-38 and 45 on the first day only.
JPGM III Annot. with prices for lots 1-38 of the first day.
BMPL Not annot.
SML Not annot.
YCNH Not annot.
VAL Not annot. | | Photocopies | RKDH and BMPL (both of YCNH), NGL (of JPGM II) and FC (of CIL) | | See Also | Sale Contents | | | Art Sales Catalogues Online | | | Digitized Catalog - GRI | | | Digitized Catalog - Met | | | |
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