Russian art market bounces back in London

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Spending in London’s Russian art auction week has returned to pre-2008-crisis levels, says John Varoli

If you’re from the former Soviet Union, own a Siberian oil well or gold mine, and love art, then the end of November can only mean one thing – it’s Russian art auction week in London! Each year during this time, four auction houses display and offer for sale the finest works of Russian art that they have secured in the previous six months. (There is also a Russian art auction week in early June).

Three of these four auction houses are household names in the art world – Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Bonhams. The fourth auction house, MacDougall’s, is less well known and much smaller than the rest, but fierce in competition and focuses solely on art from Russia and the former Soviet Union. MacDougall’s was founded in 2005 and is owned by William and Catherine MacDougall.

At the end of November this year, the four auction houses had total Russian art sales of £56 million, an amount not reached since 2008. As in every year past, Sotheby’s is the market leader, this year scoring £24 million in sales; followed by Christie’s with £17 million in sales; MacDougall’s with £9 million; and Bonhams struggling to reach £6 million in sales.

As most previous Russian art auctions, the stylistic leader was Russian modernism (1910–35). At Sotheby’s, two magnificent modernist paintings – one very large canvas by Pyotr Konchalovsky, and another, a portrait by Robert Falk – sold before the auction in a private deal. The buyer is believed to be Pyotr Aven, the billionaire banker from Moscow who has the largest and finest private collection of Russian modernist paintings. The Konchalovsky painting, which shows his family in his studio, sold for £4.7 million, while the Falk sold for about £4 million.

At Bonhams, a lavender painting of the snow-capped Himalayan mountain, Kanchenjunga, by Nikolai Roerich, sold for £1.3 million. Earlier this year, Bonhams sold Roerich’s Madonna Laboris for the record price of £7.9 million, making it the most expensive Russian painting ever sold at a Russian art auction. At Christie’s, Ilya Mashkov’s Bathers sold for £4.1 million – five times its top estimate of £800,000; and Aristarkh Lentulov’s Church in Alupka sold for £2.1m, its top estimate and a world record for the artist.

This year’s results clearly prove that the Russian art market has rebounded from its lacklustre performance over the past five years. Back in 2008, when the market was booming, there was an inexorable euphoria and major players on the market forecasted that top Russian paintings would soon easily soar over £10 million. (Such prices are primarily reserved for Malevich and Kandinsky, but their major paintings are never included in a Russian art sale because the auction houses prefer to place them in the main ‘modern master’ auctions that garner a wider range of collectors from around the world.)

So, who is buying all this art? About 90% of bidders at Russian art auctions are Russians, Ukrainians and others born in the former USSR. Russian art rarely garners much interest beyond this contingent. The exceptions, besides Kandinsky and Malevich, are for items such as works by Fabergé, perhaps best known for his jewelled Easter eggs given as gifts by the Russian Imperial family.

Obviously, these buyers are very wealthy, and they became so because they are hard-headed businessmen who like to spend their money wisely. The investment factor is crucial for them. They don’t mind spending large amounts as long as they know it’s a good investment.

Is all this art repatriated back to Russia, as many journalists claim? Probably not. Much of this auctioned art find its way to Russian-owned houses and apartments in the UK, continental Europe, America or wherever. In the case of one regular buyer, however, the items go to a private museum in Baden-Baden. The Fabergé Museum   is the first private Russian-owned art museum, founded in 2009 by one of Russia’s top art collectors, Alexander Ivanov. He is the leading collector of Fabergé in the world, and also collects Old Master paintings and ancient gold jewellery. At this past Russian week in London, Mr Ivanov took home about three dozen small Fabergé pieces, including a lovely semi-precious stone flower. They will go to increase his museum collection, which numbers around 700 Fabergé pieces, as well as more than 100 items of ancient and historical gold jewellery from various civilizations. 

Why don’t these men (and indeed, most are men), want to bring such valuable national treasures back to their home country? The reason is very simple – Russia remains a country where there is no rule of law, and property can easily be confiscated without due process. America, Europe, the Emirates, Singapore, and so on, are places where one can be more or less certain that personal art holdings will not be nationalized on a whim.

Still, it would be wrong to see Russian art collecting as motivated entirely by practical and financial considerations. The truth is that many Russians, wealthy or of modest means, do have a strong appreciation of their nation’s rich visual culture. For instance, collecting Fabergé, especially items that once belonged to the Russian Imperial family, is Mr Ivanov’s absolute passion. The beauty and the history of the items are the prime factors motivating his purchases. Mr Ivanov explained:

I’ve been collecting since the late 1980s and it was an incredible thrill for me when I finally had a small fortune that I could spend it on acquiring beautiful and important items for Russian history and culture that previously I could only see in a state museum.

Now, I own similar museum-quality items and display them in my museum in Baden-Baden for the world to see. This was of course impossible in the Soviet Union.