Hodler painting fails to reach auction guide price

27/11/2007 23:20

By Andrew Hurst

ZURICH (Reuters) - A landscape by Ferdinand Hodler, which had been out of the public eye for more than half a century, failed to reach its guide price at auction on Tuesday.

The painting by one of Switzerland’s best-known artists attracted a top bid of 4.9 million Swiss francs (2.16 million pounds), below a guide price range of 5 to 7 million francs.

An official of Sotheby’s auction house in Zurich was stunned at the painting’s failure to attract higher bids.

"We have had year after year of records with Hodler paintings. This is really a surprise considering there is a major exhibition of his work in Paris at the moment," the official said.

"It might mean that we are seeing a shift in the market, suggesting that modern art is falling from favour."

The oil, depicting the Dents-Du-Midi mountain range in bluish hues, was painted by Hodler in the Alpine resort of Champery in the Valais canton (state) in 1916.

Hodler sold the painting the following year to a Swiss collector and it was displayed only twice in exhibitions, in 1938 and 1950.

It was the second time in the past month that a major work was withdrawn from auction after failing to attract a high enough bid. A Vincent van Gogh landscape came up short at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.

Sotheby’s declined .....continued below

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to identify the owner of the Hodler work but said the work had been in the same family since 1917.

Hodler’s "Lake Geneva as seen from Saint-Prex" fetched nearly 11 million Swiss francs in June, doubling its pre-sale estimate.

The Swiss artist lived from 1853 to 1918. "Hodler didn’t just paint Alpine landscapes, he captured the essence of mountains," Urs Lanter, head of the Swiss art department at Sotheby’s, told Reuters.

Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, whose far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC) is leading a controversial anti-immigrant campaign, is a collector of Hodler’s works.

A Hodler exhibition opened at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris in mid-November and will end in February.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; editing by Robert Woodward)

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