‘Lost’ Goya sketches fetch $7.9 million at auction

Updated Wednesday, July 9, 2008 0:00 am TWN, Reuters

‘Lost’ Goya sketches fetch $7.9 million at auction

LONDON -- Three sketches by Spanish master Goya, presumed lost for more than 130 years, sold at auction on Tuesday for four million pounds (US$7.9 million), double the pre-sale estimate. The drawings, sold by Christie’s in London, were last recorded at a Paris sale of works by the artist in 1877 and all come from Goya’s celebrated private albums.

They were sold from a Swiss private collection and were in “exceptional” condition because they were never framed or exposed to light. The top lot of the three was “Down They Come,” from album D called “Witches and Women”, depicting four women fighting as they fly through the air. It sold for US$4.5 million, a world record at auction for a Goya work on paper and more than twice the pre-sale estimate.

Next was “Repentance,” representing a seated man praying before a cross, which went under the hammer for US$1.9 million, and finally “The Constable Lampinos Stitched Inside a Dead Horse” (US$1.5 million).

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