Recent Sotheby’s Old Master sale in London failed to sell 35% of lots, reflecting an increasingly lacklustre market for historical art. Despite this, the 49-lot offering achieved a respectable £39.4 million (with fees) – the highest total for an Old Master sale in London since the pandemic.

“We’re seeing very strong prices for strong pictures. But the market is a little selective,” said Alexander Bell, Sotheby’s worldwide co-chairman of Old Masters. “It’s very price sensitive.”

Eight lots were guaranteed at the evening sale. Dealers identified the UK-based financier, landowner and collector, Luca Padulli as supplying some of these entries. The most impressive guaranteed lot was an early Netherlandish panel painting, Pentecost, by the Master of the Baroncelli Portraits, which sold for £7.9 million to a single bid from a third-party guarantor.

Other highlights from the sale included the first major William Hogarth (1697-1764) painting to be offered for 50 years. Painted in 1742, Taste in High Life (or Taste à-la-Mode) sold to a single phone bid of £2.5 million from a private collector, setting a new auction record for the artist. Its content – a young black man being treated as a rich Englishwoman’s mascot – and its over-zealous cleaning may well have dissuaded other buyers from placing bids.

A rare portrait of Catherine Parr (1512-1548), the sixth wife of Henry VIII (1491-1547), by an unknown artist referred to as “Master John” became the most expensive Tudor painting of all time. It realized £2.8 million, more than four times its initial high estimate. The sale marked its first appearance at auction in nearly 200 years. An artist record was also set for Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551) for his painting The Virgin and Child, which sold to an American telephone bid for £5.1 million.

Meanwhile, many lots failed to reach their expected prices. An unusual pair of tiny, expressively painted views of Venice by Canaletto (1697-1768), made towards the end of the 1720s, were purchased for well under the guaranteed £3 million low estimate at £2.1 million. Anthony Claesz’s (1607–1649) Still life with Flowers in a Glass Vase also fell below its low estimate of £200,000, despite selling for £265,000 at auction back in 1999.

London-based dealer Marco Voena concluded that “classic collectors have disappeared completely. People only buy the big names. The market isn’t interested in classic works. It’s a museum or nothing.”

This latest edition of London’s “Old Masters Week” seemed to lack real enthusiasm, its hammer total of £32.7 million falling below the presale estimate of £34.8 million to £49.4 million. Yet it was not without hope, reaching the highest total for an Old Master sale in London since 2019 with a 19 percent increase from the results of the auction house’s Old Master evening sale in 2022.