Right at the end of this year’s Master Drawings London the Ralph Holland collection was sold at Sotheby’s on the 5th of July. Art historian and collecting connoisseur Ralph Holland (1917-2012) famous for his great love of Italian drawings shaped his collection in the second part of the twentieth century. During his long life Holland was very succesful as a collector for his great distinctiveness. He was linked to the Newcastle University where he taught art history. This summer a year after his death his drawings were auctioned in his hometown London. Holland is considered to be one of the last of the so called scholar-collectors like Philip Pouncey. Both corrected many attributions or identified unknown hands during their career and made their mark as unique collectors.
Ralph Holland started collecting in the 1940′s when he was around thrity, ultimately acquiring around 400 drawings of which over 300 were sold in this sale. The idea of the ‘Galleria portatile’, the portable gallery with drawings by famous masters, was the basis for early collectors like Sebastiano Resta. This Italian father also known as padre Resta accumulated an enormous collection of 3500 important drawings originally planned to be sold in favor of the church. Following padre Resta and the idea of a portable gallery with Italian baroque painters Holland gathered a wide range of different masters mostly Italian. He even acquired a drawing that was once owned by Resta himself. Remarkably enough this sheet by Biagio Pupini with The coronation of the virgin remained unsold.
Apart from this former Resta sheet there were many other ex-properties from famous collectors. To name some: Pierre Crozat, Pierre Jean Mariette, Sir Thomas Lawrence and John Skippe. A sketch of a swathed baby by Giulio Romano showed the collector’s mark of another famous art lover: Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was sold for over 10 000 pounds. There were indeed some amazing results like Jacopo Zucchi’s drawing of soldiers around a fortress reaching 110 000 pounds. Another highlight was the study of a standing Madonna by Carpaccio’s workshop attaining a result of 85 000 pounds.
The total value of the sale was estimated up to 1.8 million pounds, making it very interesting for all collectors of Italian drawings to see how the market would respond to these 300 drawings. It is surprising to see that even in this sale there were many chances to buy drawings with interesting provenances for modest prices. There were some sheets that even remained unsold on that day. The drawings were auctioned without reserve, which was noticeable in the last fifty lots that could hardly reach the estimate. This way it became it possible to realize ownership for around 400 pound, making clear once again that there is always an opportunity to make a new purchase.
All in all the sale raised over 1.6 million pounds, with an average of around 6500 pounds per lot. The sale of the Ralph Holland collection showed that the market for Italian master drawings is solid even though it stayed somewhat behind in the estimated total result, buyers responded quite firmly to the lots that were offered. It is certain is that the Ralph Holland sale will be remembered as a key moment in the market for master drawings. Just like in 2003 when Sotheby’s auctioned that other unique collection, the one of Phillip Pouncey.