The Top 10 Hard-to-Find Artists, Part II – 19th century

Fridays are the Best! Every other Friday, Artprice offers you a themed auction ranking. This week the ranking reveals the 10 rarest and best-performing 19th century artists at auction this year.

The 19th century is one of the biggest segments for major fine art sales, in which we extol the great masters such as Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. Last year (in 2014), more than 50,000 19th century works were sold around the world, or 12% of the total lots. While impressionism is far from the best represented or most popular movement, it is one of the most exclusive, for which collectors engage in fierce battles at auction, unaffected by prevailing trends. These aficionados of Romanticism, symbolism and Orientalism head first to London for their shopping, primary place for this market segment.

The ranking of the best auction sales in 2015 for the rarest 19th century artists places seldom-mentioned artists centre stage, such as the German Johann Wilhelm G. Barth (1779-1852), the Polish Maksymilian Gierymski (1846-1874); self-taught artist from Quebec Joseph Légaré (1795-1855), whose two pieces were sold for five times more than their estimate this year; British landscape painter William James Blacklock (1815-1858) and Daniel Thomas Egerton (1797-1842), none of whom have appeared at auction in the last three years; Frenchmen Théodore Pierre Maillot (1826-1888) and François Claude Hayette (1838-?), who just toppled their respective records. Maillot’s large-scale Nu au vase grec quintupled its upper estimate in Paris, flirting with USD 125,000 including fees, when the Orientalist painter Hayette set a record in London with USD 330,000 for a large-scale work depicting Constantinople. In addition to these names as rare as they are exclusive – for which the prices are often far from negligible – two more notable figures stand out: the ambitious John Martin and the huge Swedish playwright August Strindberg who, while he did not consider himself to be a great painter, is now identified as such by the market.

A new record for John Martin (1789-1854)

John Martin was one of the most popular British painters in his lifetime. Born in Haydon Bridge in 1789, he arrived in London in 1806, began to paint landscapes, mythological subjects, historic painting, and notably, captured the attention of the Royal Academy by giving them a painting in 1811 (Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion). The major compositions that followed are valued according to either the general public’s acceptance or incomprehension. In any case, they made waves. In 1817, he was called to the court of Princess Charlotte as a historical painter, and then his career took off in 1820, with Belshazzar’s Feast, a panic scene for which he earned a prize (sizeable at that time) of 200 pounds sterling. He then joined the newly formed Society of British Artists, and exhibited his work on several occasions before returning to the Royal Academy. In 1833, his fame crossed British borders thanks to his canvas The fall of Nineveh, purchased by the Belgian government. He was elected as a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium and received the title of knight of the Order of Leopold, awarded by the king of Belgium. The majority of his paintings were acquired in 1974 by the Tate Britain, hence the extreme rarity of his works at auction: less than 20 canvases appeared on the market in a quarter of a century, including the monumental work The Celestial City and The River of Bliss, auctioned at Sotheby’s on 8 July 2015, establishing a record at USD 4.2m including fees. Such a price was expected for this major work with a prestigious pedigree. Indeed, it was exhibited at the Royal Academy (1841), at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1969) and more recently at the Tate Britain (Apocalypse exhibit, Sept. 2011-Jan. 2012). John Martin is among the leaders of British painting, the independent spirits and precursors of the Romanticism movement for which London finds ardent defenders.

August Strindberg (1849-1912) – writer first, then painter

August Strindberg was a singular artist, a man with an anxious, hypersensitive, easily excitable disposition who was more of a writer than a painter. One of the most important Swedish writers, he is considered one of the fathers of modern drama. Like his French contemporary Victor Hugo, August Strindberg practised fine art (drawing, sculpture, painting, photography) as a sideline to his literary creation. His production is just as tenuous because he only painted during three periods of his life: 1872–1874, 1892–1894 and for a few years after 1900. Without having studied the arts, he imbued his canvases with powerful expression and developed a forward-looking art theory combining surrealism and abstract expressionism. Strindberg’s market is limited to insiders, despite the travelling retrospective organized 14 years ago (at the National Museum of Stockholm, at Copenhagen’s National Museum, and Musée d’Orsay in Paris, 2011-2002). His works delve into naturalism, romanticism, symbolism, and at times also reveal his attraction to psychology (he was close to Nietzsche), and the occult. Although he was penniless throughout his life, the work of this pioneer is now snatched up in auction houses as soon as a good opportunity presents itself: in June, the fanciful landscape presented at Bukowskis sold for double its lower estimate, USD 900,000m including fees. His work has earned 9 million-dollar sales since the end of the 80s, primarily in Stockholm (where nearly 60% of his market lies), and less frequently, London.