Go Behind the Scenes at an Art Auction
Drawings curator Julian Brooks reveals new Getty acquisitions
A Farmhouse at Shoreham, about 1830, John Linnell. Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash over graphite. Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Disegno Group
Editor’s Note
Julian Brooks is senior curator in the Department of Drawings at the Getty Museum.
Body Content
I’ve attended hundreds of art auctions in my life, and they’re nerve-wracking.
I think it’s the mixture of the “performance” of the event: lots of peers (it feels like the whole “drawings world” is there), money, and anticipation. Yet auctions are one valuable way that we and other museums bring works from private collections into the public domain.
The drawings in the Getty Museum’s collection are shared with our audiences through regular thematic exhibitions (currently Virtue and Vice: Allegory in European Drawing), through prominent installations in a dedicated new acquisitions gallery, and through downloadable high-resolution images. And—many people don’t know this—anything that isn’t on display in the galleries can be viewed in our study room by anyone by appointment.
But back to auctions. In early February, Sotheby’s held a sale of drawings from the renowned collection of New Yorker Diane Nixon, and we made a big push to bring a number of them into Getty’s collection.
Details of the contents of a sale are normally available about a month ahead of the auction date, online and sometimes via a printed catalogue, though in this case we could proactively look at past exhibitions of the collection to assess it. By the time the big day comes around, my colleagues and I in the Department of Drawings will have spent many days studying the works to be sold, identifying and researching those that could be good for the collection. Once our choices are preapproved by our bosses, we write a full report for each one, explaining what it would bring to our audiences, how it fits with other works in Getty’s collection, when it was published or exhibited, what its provenance (history) is, and how the auction price estimate compares to other drawings by the artist. This report is pored over by our bosses, registrars, and lawyers and given approval (we hope) at each point.
Then comes the moment of truth. The auctioneer goes through each lot, adeptly eliciting and handling bids from people in the room, from auction staff who execute bids on behalf of participants over the phone (using telephone banks that line each side of the room), or from Internet bidders. People crane their necks to see who is bidding, and there’s a general hum of excitement.
Just before a major lot is offered, there’s a silence of anticipation. Auctioneers will milk the theatricality of the event with exaggerated gestures and judicious pauses. Sometimes with a flurry of interest the price “flies” far above the initial auction price estimate, sometimes it sells at that initial estimate, and sometimes the drawing attracts little or no interest and is unsold (or “bought-in”—“b-i’d,” as we write in the catalog). Normally the pace is about 80 lots an hour, but the auction will frequently go more slowly if there is sustained telephone or Internet bidding.
By the end of the Nixon sale we had acquired six drawings for the collection but lost several others (contrary to popular belief, the department has limited resources and other folks bid higher). One exciting aspect is the date range of works that were acquired. The drawings include (from most to least recent):
An Odilon Redon head in profile with his trailing signature in the hair at lower left (this one will feature in the Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions exhibition at Getty, opening July 14).
Head of a Young Girl in Profile, 1895, Odilon Redon. Fabricated red chalk on gray prepared paper. Getty Museum
A striking Edward Burne-Jones drawing of figures in the Perseus myth being turned to stone.
Phineus and His Courtiers Turned to Stone, about 1876–78, Edward Burne-Jones. White chalk, brush and brown ink, heightened with white opaque watercolor, with corrections by the artist in blue watercolor, on blue prepared paper. Getty Museum
A beautiful pastoral sketch of a farmhouse from John Linnell, who was in the close circle of English artist Samuel Palmer. The drawing was purchased with funds given by members of the Disegno Group, a council that supports the work of the department through acquisitions.
A Farmhouse at Shoreham, about 1830, John Linnell. Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash over graphite. Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Disegno Group
An astonishing full-sheet “portrait” of a tree by Annibale Carracci.
Study of a Tree, about 1600, Annibale Carracci. Pen and brown ink over black chalk. Getty Museum
Renaissance artist Baccio Bandinelli’s treatment of the aftermath of the Crucifixion, a design for a bronze relief for Emperor Charles V.
The Descent from the Cross, about 1528–29, Baccio Bandinelli. Pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk. Getty Museum
A 1516–17 landscape by the Venetian Domenico Campagnola with the sun rising between two peaks over a fortified hill town.
Landscape with a Fortified Town and Rising Sun, about 1516–17, Domenico Campagnola. Pen and brown ink. Getty Museum
The works have now arrived at the museum and will be integrated into our schedule of displays. Some of them will feature in the summer rotation (opening June 30) of drawings in our new acquisitions gallery (which currently hosts a coastal scene by Caspar David Friedrich, Olimpe Arson's watercolor of a cactus, Pieter Holsteyn II’s sheet of studies of insects, and a Herman Henstenburgh still life honoring paper-cut artist Joanna Koerten Blok). The rest will go up in the fall, beginning November 3.
These acquisitions are immensely exciting for our department and represent a major addition for the Getty collection as a whole. We’re happy that they are now fully available to our audiences.
