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Despite having lived in Los Angeles since the 1970s, Japan-born artist Takako Yamaguchi has never had a solo museum show in her adopted hometown, according to MOCA senior curator Anna Katz. “The time was right, if not overdue,” said Katz, who chose the artist for MOCA’s Focus series. Katz, who first met Yamaguchi on a studio visit in 2017, has included her in two of the museum’s group exhibitions—a 2019 show on pattern and decoration, and a 2024 show on photorealism. The Focus exhibition, on view through January 4, showcases 10 paintings from Yamaguchi’s Seascape series, begun in 2021 and comprising 25 works to date. Done in oil and metal leaf on canvas, the works synthesize motifs Yamaguchi has developed over her career, like braids as clouds, and zigzags as water.

Takako Yamaguchi, Procession (2024). Photo: Gene Ogami/Courtesy of Ortuzar

Yamaguchi’s stylized compositions are inspired by art nouveau, Mexican muralism and transcendentalism, as well as Japanese art such as woodblocks, kimono prints, and folding screens. The market favors her figurative works, such as the 1994 painting Catherine and Midnight, which set a world auction record for Yamaguchi when it sold for $1.1 million at Sotheby’s last year.

The 73-year-old artist had been working in her Los Angeles studio for decades, showing at galleries here and there, including her husband Tom Jimmerson’s space, As-Is. In 2021, Katz’s pattern and decoration show toured to Bard College in upstate New York, where gallerist Ales Ortuzar saw it and was “blown away.” He later saw a show of Yamaguchi’s early work at Stars gallery in L.A., took her out to dinner, and offered her a show in New York. It was a watershed moment, leading to million-dollar prices at auction, and inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial. A show of Yamaguchi’s Seascape paintings just concluded at Ortuzar’s Tribeca gallery. Meanwhile, it’s fitting that her first museum show is with Katz, who started it all.

And now on to the main event…

Across auction categories and price points, we’ve seen that today’s collectors are willing to bid high for the works they truly covet, and pass on those they can live without—a trend that was on display once again in this week’s Old Masters, antiquities, and decorative arts sales in London. Overall, the sales met expectations for the big auction houses, thanks in part to a handful of particularly sought-after works that went for multiples above their estimates.

Of course, the price generating the most headlines was the £31.9 million ($43.5 million) for Canaletto’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day, in Christie’s Old Masters evening sale. Auctioneer Henry Pettifer opened the bidding on the work, which had a third-party guarantee, at £19 million. Chased by four bidders, the painting had all the signifiers of success—rarity, quality, sterling provenance, and freshness to the market. It is the second-most-expensive artwork to sell at auction this year—after the $47.6 million Mondrian from the Riggio Collection at Christie’s New York in May.

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In the end, the Canaletto accounted for 58 percent of Christie’s Old Masters evening sale total of £55.3 million, 45 percent above the £38.1 million estimate, with 87 percent of the 39 lots finding buyers. This was the house’s highest sell-through rate for an Old Masters evening sale since 2012. The Lady with the two beards by Willem Key, from the collection of Mickey Cartin, sold for £882,000 against an estimate of £300,000, attracting the high level of interest that Andrew Fletcher, who oversees the Old Masters department, had predicted. The de Heem still life and Titian portrait, both from the same European collection and each estimated at £3 million, sold, as expected, for £3.7 million and £3.4 million, respectively.

Sotheby’s Old Masters evening sale was smaller, with only 31 lots, the most expensive of which was estimated at just £2 million. Altogether, the sale made £14.8 million against an estimate of £11.6 million, with 81 percent of lots finding buyers. In one of those great art world rediscovery stories, a painting that was purchased last year at Dreweatts for just £525 (not a typo), then subsequently identified as a work of J.M.W. Turner’s, sold for £1.9 million, more than nine times its estimate of £200,000, to a private U.K. collector. It’s the first oil painting exhibited by the artist, painted when he was just 17. Sotheby’s also sold a Turner watercolor of Lake Geneva in its works on paper sale for £482,600. Neither work had been seen in public for more than 100 years. This year marks the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth, being celebrated at numerous institutions, including the Yale Center for British Art.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol (1792). Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Also in Sotheby’s evening sale, bidders chased a rare, remarkably preserved 14th century Byzantine icon, driving up the price to £825,500, more than five times the estimate. Meanwhile, a Vilhelm Hammershøi from the same consignor, estimated at £2 million, went unsold. It was one of two evening sale paintings by the artist across both houses that failed to find a buyer; a third, in Sotheby’s evening sale, sold below the low estimate; and a fourth, from a Christie’s day sale that was being sold without reserve, was withdrawn. His market, which has recently seen a meteoric rise, seems to have crashed back down to Earth.

Of the women artists in Sotheby’s evening sale, Clara Peeters’s genteel self-portrait, estimated at £1.2 million, went unsold, but an Artemisia Gentileschi painting depicting David with the severed head of Goliath sold to a private collector for £2 million, double its estimate. Her little-known contemporary Diana de Rosa’s painting of Salome with the severed head of Saint John the Baptist on a platter (are you sensing a theme here?) sold for an artist record of £317,500, five times its estimate.

Diana de Rosa, called Annella di Massimo, Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

The rediscovered Gentileschi, painted in the 1630s when she was in London, is one of the best works by the artist ever to appear on the market. Sotheby’s also set auction records for the Florentine Renaissance painter Lorenzo di Credi (£2.7 million) and 16th century French portraitist Corneille de Lyon (£863,300). Meanwhile, Bonhams set a world auction record for 16th century society portraitist George Gower, when a large painting of a resplendently dressed aristocrat sold for £1.1 million.

Meanwhile, Christie’s Exceptional Sale totalled £5.6 million, just a few thousand shy of its low estimate, with 72 percent of the 40 lots finding buyers. As expected, the top lot was the 11½-foot-wide Union Jack flown at the Battle of Trafalgar, still infused with shards of metal and wood splinters. It doubled its estimate, selling for £1 million after a pitched battle between an online bidder and a phone bidder. Two lots from the same private Dutch collection—a 1704 silver wine cooler, and a pair of silver-mounted green glass bottles from 1665—both sold for multiples of their estimates to make £365,000 and £214,200, respectively. Unsurprisingly, two of the lots that didn’t sell—a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth estimated at £70,000, and an iridescent ammonite estimated at £100,000—would have been better suited for a natural history auction.

The single-owner sale of the Bertrand de Giey silver collection at Sotheby’s was only 42 percent sold, with only eight of the 19 lots finding buyers. But there were bright spots: A circa 1600 German silver-mounted turbo shell cup, estimated at £100,000, sold for £685,800—half of the sales total of £1.3 million. Sotheby’s silver specialist Miles Harrison said they knew it would do well, but the result was a little surprising, even to them. He said it helped that the condition was impressive, and this example is particularly figural, with Jonah and the Whale on the cover. Meanwhile, Sotheby’s auction of sculpture spanning 4,000 years was 68 percent sold. The top lot was Shock Dog, depicting a now-extinct breed by 18th century sculptor Anne Seymour Damer, which sold for £635,000, more than three times its estimate. Consigned to auction by descendants of the artist, the 15-inch sculpture is the terracotta model for a marble version in the Met’s collection.

Bonhams had one of the top antiquities of the week—a Cycladic marble figure that made £279,800, more than quadruple its estimate of £60,000. Of their 220 lots, about 30 were ancient jewels, which, in my inexpert opinion, are the ultimate flex, like the 1st-2nd century A.D. Romano-Egyptian snake ring that made £8,960, and a 4th century B.C. Greek gold bracelet with lion head terminals for £7,680.

Sotheby’s offered only six antiquities lots this season in their mixed sculpture sale, whereas Christie’s held a stand-alone antiquities sale of 103 lots, with 97 percent of them finding buyers. As Christie’s department head Claudio Corsi predicted, the 19 lots of ancient jewels with Kofler-Truniger provenance sold exceptionally well, combining for a sum that was 259 percent of the low estimate. The grouping was led by a Greek gold and crystal box-shaped bezel ring from the Hellenistic period (circa 3rd-2nd century B.C.) which made £100,800 against an estimate of £12,000.

Thanks, Julie. Wishing a great Fourth of July to those who celebrate.

M

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