This £7.5 million nude is proof that women are the future of the art world

London’s summer season of Modern and Contemporary Art sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips took another step backwards last week mustering a slim £97.8 million – down 25 per cent from last June’s £129.5 million, and a mind-boggling 84 per cent down on the £600 million recorded 10 years ago.

The drop is due in part to Christie’s and Phillips abandoning their high-value evening sales to focus on Frieze week in October, so Sotheby’s was left to show the world what London could do. But while they finished streets ahead of the competition, Sotheby’s £75.7 million total was a severe 41.5 per cent down on last year.

Amid the gloomy statistics, however, comes a ray of hope. A pre-sale report written by number crunchers ArtTactic tracked the booming market for female artists, some of whom were to feature in the Sotheby’s sale.

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The report calculated that between 2018 and 2024, auction sales by female artists rose from $523.7 million to $675.6 million and that the female artists’ share of the market had doubled from 6.2 per cent to 13.5 per cent. In the major museums, Tate and MoMA New York, the percentage of solo shows and acquisitions of works by female artists increased to 50 per cent over the same period. The report also stated that the rate of return (Compound Annual Growth Rate) on works by 20th-century artists that had been bought and resold was much better for female than male artists, supporting the view that women artists have been undervalued.

Although the report was careful to state that it did not constitute investment advice, it was hard to escape the implication that female artists were on an upward trend. And female artists turned out to be the stars of their sale.

The top lot of the week at £7.5 million was a voluptuous female nude (La Belle Rafaëla, 1927) by the bisexual society art deco painter, Tamara de Lempicka, which was being sold by lyricist Sir Tim Rice. Sotheby’s did not name him, but Sir Tim was credited as the owner when he lent the painting last year to a de Lempicka exhibition at the de Young Museum in California. He is believed to have paid about £1 million for it in 1997.

As an indication of how her prices have moved, the painting was previously owned by actor Jack Nicholson after it had sold at auction for £175,000 in 1985. Other celebrity owners of her sensual, stylised work include Madonna, Donna Karan and Barbra Streisand, and a handful of Russian oligarchs. Although born in Poland, her father was Russian.

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While Rafaëla was not a record for de Lempicka, other female artists did attain that distinction at Sotheby’s. A large Jenny Saville charcoal drawing of intertwining reclining nudes entitled Mirror, 2011-12, sold for £2.1 million. This is a record for a drawing by Saville, whose currency is no doubt helped by the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, which runs until September. It attracted a chorus of bids, including one from the well-heeled Turkish banker, Kemal Cingillioğlu, though even he was outgunned.

A large Jenny Saville charcoal drawing of intertwining reclining nudes entitled Mirror, 2011-12, sold for £2.1 million - Sotheby's

The other record in the sale was for a Mondrian-inspired relief painting White, Black, Blue and Red,1944, by queer/androgynous British artist Marlow Moss. Moss had previously been written off as a Mondrian pasticheur who changed her name from Marjorie to Marlow in 1919 to sound more masculine. But her originality as an artist is now recognised, and her rare work which survived a wartime bomb hitting her studio, is commanding higher and higher prices. This example, which had cost £82,000 in 2009, raced past its £200,000 estimate to sell for £609,000.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Peyton, that American painter of cultural icons, fetched her second highest price at auction with a work depicting brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher. Seemingly offered to coincide with the Oasis reunion tour, it sold for £2 million, six times its previous price in 2011.

Elizabeth Peyton’s Liam & Noel sold for £2 million, six times its previous price in 2011 - Sotheby's

Later in the week, in the ceramic collection formed by Oxford bike shop-owner Sydney Denton, the top price by a long way was for a female artist, Dame Magdalene Odundo, whose untitled long necked burnished and carbonised terracotta pot from 1990 quadrupled estimates to set a new record – £723,000.

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Even discounting the ceramic sale, ArtTactic calculated that the female artists’ contribution to this June’s sales leapt 143 per cent from £6.9 million last year to £16.9 million, increasing their market share with the men from 8 per cent to 29 per cent.

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A Union Jack flag from The Battle of Trafalgar goes up for auction

A battle-worn flag once proudly flown under the order of Lord Nelson - Christie's

At five o’clock this afternoon, Christie’s will offer for sale an exceptional 11-and-a-half-foot wide hand-stitched, battle-worn Union Jack flag. Once proudly flown under the order of Horatio, Lord Nelson from the mast of HMS Spartiate at The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and still embedded with shards of metal, the estimate is £500,000-£800,000.

Nelson was one of the first naval commanders to fly the Union Jack in battle and, according to Christie’s, only two other Union Jacks from Trafalgar have survived intact. One is in the National Maritime Museum, and the other, entirely coincidentally, is for sale with Greens of Cheltenham at the Treasure House Fair in London, which closes this evening at 8pm. Slightly smaller at nine feet across and priced at £450,000, this one was flown from the forestay of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood’s flagship HMS Royal Sovereign.

According to the Nelson expert Martyn Downer, who is advising Greens on the sale, neither Greens nor Christie’s knew another flag was coming onto the market and the two prices were arrived at independently. Both would have used the HMS Spartiate flag’s previous auction price, nearly £400,000 in 2009, as a guide. At the fair opening last week, offers were made for the Royal Sovereign flag but none accepted. That may change before the fair closes, depending on what happens at Christie’s this afternoon.

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The Bristol Museum crowdfunds to buy a rediscovered Turner

The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol was painted when Turner was just 17 - Sotheby's

Museums don’t usually telegraph their intentions to bid at auction publicly, but tomorrow, the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery will be bidding at Sotheby’s for a rediscovered JMW Turner painting which depicts the Avon Gorge before the Clifton Suspension Bridge was built. Not only is it of local interest, The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, painted when he was just 17, was the first painting Turner ever exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1793.

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Had they spotted it last year at a provincial auction where its authorship was unknown, the museum might have bought it for £525. But the buyer took it to be cleaned and discovered a signature under the grime. Now valued beyond the museum’s budget at £200,000-300,000, it has launched a public appeal to raise funds through the crowdfunding process in which individuals and companies can contribute directly online. Within five days the crowdfund had raised over £100,000. Now it’s a matter of whether competitive bidders will hold off and allow the museum to be successful.

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