Neumeister's winter auction showed a strong tendency in the direction of Saxony: The provenance indication "Saxon nobility" was behind silver, baroque furniture or even porcelain from the Meissner manufactory, which is one of the pride of the state.
But the reference to aristocracy alone, especially when it comes “nameless”, does not necessarily have a sales-promoting effect.
In any case, most of the hammer prices followed the moderate estimates, and the most expensive piece of porcelain came from another source: the tall potpourri vase, from the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Potsdam around 1900, lavishly decorated with plastic flowers, shot from 2,500 to a proud 30,000 euros.
With Antoine Pesne's enchanting portrait of Countess Maria Magdalena von Dönhoff, born Marianna Bielinska and daughter of a high court marshal, the tide turned for the "Saxon noble provenance".
Because the half-length portrait of the temporary maîtresse en titre of the Saxon king Augustus the Strong made it effortlessly to 20,000 euros, with an estimate of 7000 to 9000 euros.
The painting went to a private bidder from Hesse.
The Saxon nobleman Bernhard von Lindenau - lawyer, astronomer, statesman and patron - after whom the museum in Altenburg is named, belonged to Johann Georg Ziesenis' portrait of Princess Marie Charlotte Amalie of Saxe-Meiningen on her embroidery frame, for which a collector from Thuringia approved the lower estimate with 15,000 euros.
Descendants of Lindenau also brought a portrait of the pensive-looking Duke Augustus of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, attributed to Josef Grassi, to the auction.
Bid online, it rose to 11,000 euros (7000/9000).
Finally, among these and other lots with a connection to Saxony, a portrait of Philipp Melanchthon by the older Lucas Cranach stood out.
This rendezvous of prominent figures from Wittenberg reached the lower estimate at 100,000 euros in the after sale.
Art from the 19th century provided the auction house with further successes, with a Tegernsee watercolor painted by Johann Georg von Dillis achieving 35,000 euros (25,000/30,000), or with Carl Spitzweg’s painting “Gebirgsschlucht mit Bauernhaus”, for which the hammer only came at 22,000 euros fell (12,000/15,000).
Heavily courted, Franz Roubaud's 1916 signed “Riding Cossacks Crossing a River” went to America for 55,000 euros (7000/8000).
Ernst Wilhelm Nay's gouache "Frau mit Kind im Herbst" from 1946, which grossed 30,000 euros (30,000/40,000), occupied the top ranks with Bernard Buffet's 1955 mixed media "Casserole rouge", which brought in 32,000 euros (30,000). the more recent works.