There was a pretty spectacular conclusion to the auction at auctioneers Campo & Campo up in Antwerp last Tuesday. Bidding for a mysterious portrait of an oriental sultan triggered excitement in the hall and beyond. The reason was not immediately clear but the work was eventually sold for some 3 million euros from a starting price of 4,000 euros.
‘Portrait of a Sultan’ fetches 3 million euros from 4,000-euro starting price at auction in Antwerp
Colin Clapson
Published:
Guy Campo of auction house Campo & Campo takes up the story. “We received the painting from a private individual. The initial estimate that was quickly made put the price at 500 to 700 euros.”
Mystery surrounds the work as it is not clear who painted it and when and who exactly it portrays. But soon Guy Campo and his team realised there was something special about this painting. The work bore a special stamp on the reverse and this was a stamp that suggested the painting was part of the collection of William III, the Dutch ruler who took the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland as king together with his wife and cousin Mary following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
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William III, Prince of Orange, was born in 1650 and was scion of the House of Orange, an ancient German aristocratic family that to this day rules the Netherlands. As Prince of Orange William also ruled the Netherlands, but later also became King of England, Scotland and Ireland in his own right together with his wife Mary.
As soon as the auction was billed it attracted an awful lot of interest, suggesting to the auctioneers that there was more to this work than initially met the eye. “Everybody who is anybody in this world made enquiries” explained Guy Campo.
‘When you take an item like this to market and it appears in the catalogue, everyone can see it. People can drop by to see it in person. We noticed how potential buyers requested a phone line to the auction and wanted access to the internet to increase their bids.’
The mystery remains (for now)
Campo & Campo too had the work examined and valued by an expert in Old Masters but failed to unravel the mystery. Guy Campo puts it like this: ‘There was something, but we didn't quite know what exactly.’ Because of the short notice, Campo & Campo did not have sufficient time to have the work investigated more thoroughly.
Still, to be on the safe side, the starting price was raised from 2,000 to 4,000 euros. It’s an amount that was completely dwarfed by the final result. ‘We were not able to research this work sufficiently, but the market corrects itself,’ Guy Campo says. The sale also means that the mystery will not be solved soon. Nothing about the buyer is being revealed.
Guy Campo himself calls the auction ‘a unique one-off’ in his career and that, after he has been running the auction house for 42 years.
‘I would never have dared to dream of this. It happens that you reach 200,000 euros from a starting price of 5,000 euros, but 3 million, that's actually absurd. It does, however, show that even as a ‘small’ auction house from a little country like Belgium, we can still compete with the big players on the international market.”