Jackson's Auction Blog

I have literally held thousands of antique Russian icons in my hands. I can usually tell you pretty quickly what a Russian icon is worth, what time period it is from, and what story is being told. I can quickly identify if the painting is new on an old board or if the cracks are fake (to make the icon look older than what it is). Occasionally, our firm comes across an antique Russian icon with a story as interesting as the iconography and I thought I would share one such example with you

If you know anything about Russian history, you know who the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov is. His story is for another blog post, because today I only have time to tell you about this one icon. The icon itself depicts his name saint (in Russia, it was very common to commission a Russian icon of a saint that shares the name of the intended receiver – in this case, the Crown Prince) Saint Alexei Metropolitan of Moscow.

At Jackson’s International’s auction of May 24th and May 25th, 2016. The multiple estate and collections auction featured treasures from around the world and attracted over 1,000 international bidders totaling $1.5 million in sales.

The auction opened with a small offering of paintings, works on paper, and bronzes featuring a typical seashore scene by Hendrik Willem Mesdag (Dutch 1831-1915) which came from a collection in Minnesota and sold to a phone bidder from the Netherlands for $100,000. That was followed by an interesting preparatory drawing for an altar crucifix attributed to Etienne Delaune (French 1518-1595) which sold to a Parisian phone bidder for $63,750. A charming painting by Frederick Soulacroix (French 1858-1933) depicting a young woman making a curtain call, sold for $20,000 and an oil on canvas painting depicting the Holy Family by Michael Rieser (Austrian 1828-1905) sold for $14,375. A pair of religious painting attributed to Luis Berruaco (Mexican 18th century) went to a buyer in France for $9,375 and a 17th century Dutch portrait of a gentleman sold to a buyer in the Netherlands for $8,125.

The November auction at Jackson’s International totaled 3.6 million with an amazingly high sales rate of a little over 90 percent, almost double that of recent sales at many of the large auction houses, especially in the area of Russian arts and antiques for which Jackson’s has gained an international reputation and following. The sale attracted over 700 registered bidders representing over 37 countries worldwide.

The auction featured the lifelong collection of Russian icons from the estate of the late Jose Antonio Danobeitia (1942-2011) of Toronto, Canada, as well as examples from other smaller collections. There were no shortages of buyers for the fine and unusual, and when it came to Russian icons, the trend of late (circa 1880-1915), high quality examples proved once again to dramatically outpace what was once the focal point of every Russian icon collection, early pre-17th century icons.