Record prices for Stubbs, Gainsborough in $80m London sale

5 July 2011

Stubbs's 1765 canvas "Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, With a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey" sold for $36 million at Christie's in London on July 5.

(Christie's International)

click to enlarge

Thomas Gainsborough's "Portrait of Mrs. William Villebois," brought 6.5 million pounds, about $10.4 million.

(Christie's International)

A George Stubbs painting brought an artist record price of 22.4 million pounds ($36 million) and a Thomas Gainsborough fetched 6.5 million pounds ($10.4 million) in a $80 million Christie’s sale, making it the second-highest total for a mixed-owner auction of historic paintings in London.

The July 5 sale featured Stubbs’s 6-foot canvas, “Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, With a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey,” which fell to a single bid in the room from New York's Piers Davies Fine Art. The 1765 painting had been consigned by the Woolavington Collection with an estimate of 20 million pounds to 30 million pounds.

Gainsborough's 7-foot high portrait of the granddaughter of the brewer Benjamin Truman was bought in the room by Harry Smith, managing director of the London-based art adviser Gurr Johns, for just above 6 million pounds.

Read more at Bloomberg

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