IN LONDON, prices soared again this week and new records were set. Sotheby's sold a painting of a Meath dog, Viscount Gormanston's White Dogfor £361,250 (€430,000) to a telephone bidder while another painting by artist George Stubbs, Brood Mares and Foals, sold for £10.1 million (€12.1 million) establishing a new auction record for his work.
Sotheby’s also achieved a new world record for a piece of English furniture when five bidders chased the Harrington Commode (an ornate, serpentine-shaped chest of drawers) to £3.7 million.
But the week's most extraordinary event was at Sotheby's New Bond Street galleries in London, where a magnificent, rare, copy of John James Audubon's Birds of Americasold for £7.3 million (€8.73m), establishing a new world record price for any printed book sold at auction.
It was bought by a London dealer who described the book as priceless. The book (four volumes) which measures 3ft by 2ft, contains some 1,000 prints illustrating 500 breeds of birds – painted to life-size – and was first published in sections between 1827 and 1838.
Only 119 copies of the first edition survive and most are in public museums and galleries. Only a handful remain in private ownership. The last copy to come to the market was sold for $8.8 million by Christie’s in New York 10 years ago.
