Another landscape painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau, executed
en plein air, has surfaced at auction. The painting, simply titled
Coastal Landscape, is up for bid at the upcoming
European Paintings auction being held by
Bonham's later this month. It measures 10 3/4" by 16", and is expected to fetch between $3000 and $5000.
To see more
plein air paintings by Bouguereau, click
here.
3 comments:
Only $3000 to $5000?
I know! That's like one hundred Canadian dollars!
I think the price has a lot to do with subject matter, and particularly in this case, condition. Bouguereau is collected for his paintings of people, and though the landscape work is rarer, it's the rarity in this case which makes it less desirable. Besides, this painting isn't very large, has many scratches on it, and at least one area with a bad touch-up on it.
If it were a rough color study of a figure, you'd expect to pay three times as much; a portrait study, ten times as much. Even charcoal figure drawings would be offered at prices at least twice of this landscape. Of course a fully rendered figure painting would be twenty times more and up.
This painting was offered up by Sotheby's in 2005, expecting to sell for between $8000 and $12000. It didn't sell. The current owner purchased it in 2006, but I'm not sure what they paid. At $3000 to $5000, I'm guessing they'd be losing money on it, but perhaps they are hoping to generate interest and get a mini-bidding war underway. I'm curious to find out what the hammer price will be.
Let's pool our money and buy it! You can have it Wednesday, Fridays and Sundays and I'll have it Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
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