AN OLD 17TH-CENTURY PAINTING DISCOVERED IN A BARN ATTIC SOLD FOR OVER $7 MILLION AT AUCTION
Beautiful Old Master paintings were up for auction at Sotheby's New York on May 21. The sale featured everything from a Frans Hall picture of a youngster playing the violin to Adriaen Coorte's endearing still life of a bowl of strawberries, drawn from the extensive collection of the late Wall Street banker Thomas Saunders and his wife Jordan. However, one item in particular caught our attention more than the others: a landscape painting by Frans Post, a Dutch artist who was originally found in the attic of a barn.
The 1666 picture, titled View of Olinda, Brazil, with Ruins of the Jesuit Church, has a lengthy provenance, having passed through several Parisian collections during the 18th century before being purchased by the dealer Charles Simon in the 19th century. View of Olinda finally ended up in a private collection in Connecticut, where it mysteriously found a home in a barn's attic. George Wachter, the chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master paintings at Sotheby's, did not come across the work until 1998.
“It was filthy, black, dirty,” Wachter told Rob Report “, You could hardly see it.”
Despite his suspicion that it was "a killer," Wachter decided to contact the Saunders couple and eventually advocate for its purchase. The post's scene gradually came to life as it was restored by Nancy Krieg, a leading conservator of Dutch and Flemish paintings.
“It became blue and white, and it was just incredible,” Wachter explained. “There was a little anteater in the corner, and all these animals running around, and all the different kinds of figures.”
Not only does Post's masterful use of colour, light, and realism make View of Olinda an outstanding painting. Post was among the first European artists to visit and paint from New World landscapes, including Brazil, which was then a Dutch colony, in contrast to many of his peers from the 17th century. Many of the artist's creations, which were primarily on the smaller side and generally based on memory or early sketches, were influenced by his Brazilian surroundings. In contrast, the view of Olinda is 23 ¾ by 35 ⅝ inches.
“This was his calling card, these views of Brazil,” David Pollack, SVP and head of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s, told Robb Report. “To have something on this scale certainly ranks [View of Olinda] in the top tier, no doubt.”
These undoubtedly had a part in the painting's successful auction outcome. Post set a new record when it sold View of Olinda for an incredible $6 million ($7.3 million plus fees). The artist's previous record, set at a different Sotheby's auction in 1997, was $4.5 million.
