Enfilade

As Enfilade observed back in October when the announcement was first made regarding the sale of Raphael’s Head of a Muse, the drawing comes with an interesting eighteenth-century provenance; it once belonged to the Dutch collector Gosuinus Uilenbroek and the British painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. Last night in London, the work sold for a record $48million. As reported by Kelly Crow in the Wall Street Journal:

A rare Raphael chalk drawing of a woman’s head sold for a record £29.1 million, or $48 million, at Christie’s in London – the highest price paid all year for a work of art at auction. In the same sale, Christie’s sold a Rembrandt portrait that hadn’t been seen in public for nearly four decades for a record £20.2 million pounds, or $33.2 million. Raphael’s Head of a Muse sold to an anonymous buyer for double its high estimate, a sign that collectors are willing to chase after older masterpieces even as global prices for living artists remain shaky. The work’s price outperforms a Henri Matisse table scene that Christie’s sold this spring for $46.5 million and an Andy Warhol screenprint of 200 dollar bills that Sotheby’s sold last month for $43.7 million. . .

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