January 2009

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But a name that both dealers and auction-house specialists return to is that of Sir Alfred Munnings, ‘consistently the highest priced with all his top 10 auction prices in excess of £1m’, says Lindberg. Munnings is ‘always the image on the covers of the [sporting art] catalogues… time and time again he takes the big numbers’, confirms J.R. Robbins, Fine Art Appraiser and Cataloguer at the Sporting Art department, Sotheby’s, New York. Indeed, Sotheby’s has sold four out of the top five highest prices for works by Munnings, including the record figure of $7.84m for The Red Prince Mare (1921; Fig. 3) in 2004. In terms of quality, Brandon Lindberg recommends that one ‘generally pay attention to an artist’s ability for accurately depicting the anatomy of the horse and how it moves, as well as the sheen of the coat’ – although, in response to the record-breaking Red Prince Mare, New York magazine The City Review commented that: ‘horse lovers apparently tend to not mind paying a great deal of money for portraits of their steeds disproportionate to their artistic merit’.

The popular image of sporting art as fox and hounds or jockeys and silks painted in oils by male British artists is largely accurate. Robbins does point, however, to the ‘wonderful’ The Horse Fair (1867) by the French painter Rosa Bonheur, which took an impressive $480,000 at Sotheby’s in New York last year. Sculptures by her brother, Isidore, of working dogs, are also found in the sporting-art sales. In an attempt to broaden this niche market – albeit one with a strong core following – the auction houses are widening sporting sales to include maritime, equestrian and wildlife art, believing that a clientele with a taste for setters and stage-coaches will also prove to have an enthusiasm for a David Shepherd elephant or a Bob Kuhn elk. Says Robbins: ‘we spearheaded and opened up [the category]’. Sotheby’s sales, which now include African and American wildlife art, are attracting new buyers in markets such as China and South America.