Bidding rewards the brave

The market for Orientalist art has always been uneven. In the early 1980s prices soared for 19th-century pictures by European artists of deserts and camels and falcons and fairs. Works by Lord Leighton and John Frederick Lewis, so unfashionable in the 1960s, earned stratospheric sums. Then they tumbled, first in the early 1990s and then again now.

Christie’s Orientalist sale in London on July 9th did not go well. Of the 59 lots on offer, 27 failed to sell despite every effort by the auctioneer, Alexandra McMorrow, to squeeze bids out of those attending. It was an afternoon of thin trading, with reluctant bidders and bargain-hunting buyers. The entire sale was despatched to just 14 purchasers. …