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It was a Sotheby's sale in 1958 that most dramatically set the level of the recent market. On the block were seven French paintings from the collection of the late Jakob Goldschmidt of New York; the collection's Cezannes, Renoirs and Manets established new highs for these artists (see color, center spread) and served notice on museums and collectors that the scarcity of great works of art had now pushed their value to such heights that collectors had better start buying before things got out of hand.
Between October 1958 and July 1959, the gross at Sotheby's was $16 million, including $770,000 for a Peter Paul Rubens (see opposite page), until last week the highest price ever paid at an auction. A Gauguin Tahitian scene, owned by George Goodyear of Buffalo, fetched $364,000. Cezanne's Peasant in a Blue Blouse got $406,000; and Gainsborough's Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews brought $364,000, the top price ever paid at an auction for an English painting.
Frans Hals's Portrait of a Cavalier, which, unknown to the art world, had been residing for more than 100 years in the collection of a Major Warde-Aldam, went for $509,600. This year a new record for Goya was set with the sale of his hapless Duke of Wellington, which thereupon went to London's National Gallery and was almost immediately stolen. The Montreal collector, L. V. Randall, sold his master drawings for $186,400. Among them was a saint by Hugo van der Goes that brought an astonishing $84,000, making it the most expensive drawing of all time. Last year Sotheby's sales spiraled to a dizzy $28,834,100 (as compared with Parke-Bernet's $8.430,306).
Auctions: Theory & Practice. In theory, auctioning a work is the most accurate way to put a price on the priceless; in practice, its major visible flaw is "auction fever," in which rich amateurs get carried away and bid against one another to force prices up from 25% to 60% more than prudence dictates. But—also in practice—there is more to many an auction than the eye can see, mostly stemming from the fact that art dealers often comprise about three-fourths of the bidders.
To keep the market up for a particular artist, for example, a dealer may place a work on sale, then bid it up himself so that the price for that artist will reach a new plateau. In another dodge, dishonest dealers sometimes hold pre-auction conspiracies among themselves: they buy shares in a work that is scheduled for the block and select one of their number to bid on it while all the rest pledge themselves to remain silent. With the competition thus limited, the selected dealer gets the work at a low price. When he, in turn, sells it at a substantial markup, all the shareholders get a cut of the profit.