RUBENS’S LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS ACHIEVES £44,882,500 /$58,167,720 /€52,422,760 HIGHEST PRICE EVER ACHIEVED FOR OLD
MASTER PAINTING AT CHRISTIE’S
London – Peter Paul Rubens’s Lot and his Daughters (circa 1613-14) achieved £44,882,500 /$58,167,720 /€52,422,760, the highest price ever achieved for an Old Master painting at Christie's this evening (7 July). The work sold to a collector on the phone in Christie’s Old Master and British Paintings Evening Sale, part of Classic Week in London, after a bidding battle lasting fourteen minutes with four bidders involved. One of the most important paintings by the artist to have remained in private hands, it is an outstanding example of Rubens’s early maturity.
“The sale of this significant painting demonstrates that Christie’s continues to lead the masterpiece market at auction and in this field. A stunning work of psychological complexity, Lot and his Daughters was created at a time when Rubens’s reputation as the most renowned artists in Antwerp had already placed him firmly at the centre of the European artistic stage.” Paul Raison, Deputy Chairman, Old Master Pictures
Lot and his Daughters boasts a distinguished provenance, once forming part of the collections of wealthy Antwerp merchants; a Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands; Joseph I Holy Roman Emperor; and the Dukes of Marlborough where it hung in Blenheim Palace and was sold in its original Blenheim frame.
Lot and his Daughters is a cautionary story, which Rubens returned to throughout his career. Pulsating with life, this biblical canvas illustrates the events after Lot and his family have fled the immoral city of Sodom having escaped to the desolate mountain town of Zoar.
This is the second highest price ever paid for an Old Master painting at auction, the record also being held by Rubens whose The Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49,506,648 at auction in 2002.
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Five Things You Might Like to Know About Peter Paul Rubens 1. Born in Siegen, Nassau-Dillenburg (now North Rhine Westphalia, Germany), his father was the legal advisor as well as the lover and father of a child born to Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange.
2. Italy had a big impact on the young artist: in 1600 Rubens first visited Venice where he was able to see works by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. The compositions and palette were very influential and this can be seen in later works such as Lot and his Daughters.
3. He was a diplomat as well as an artist: while living in Italy with the Duke of Vincenzo I Gonzaga he made his first diplomatic mission to Spain. He would continue to combine diplomacy and art throughout his life.
4. Peter Paul Rubens also dabbled in architecture: In 1609 he married Isabella Brant, daughter of a leading Antwerp humanist and in 1610 he built a new house with a studio attached that he had designed himself.
5. One of Rubens’s most famous pupils was the leading Flemish portrait artist Anthony van Dyke.