I'm offering a highly realistic modern work at auction.

Bernaerts, from Belgium, sells on 19 June 2018 a "Ross Rossin" Egyptian Gardens, a large (120 by 120cm) oil on canvas estimated at 1500 to 1800 Euro.

And it is offered by me 😄

Ross Rossin is born in Bulgaria in 1964, studied at the National Academy of his country, and started working as a portrait painter, first in Japan and later all over Europe. While he then already started on his career as the portrait painter for the rich, the famous, and the important, he also created other works, often somewhat mysterious ones featuring nude women.

By 1999, he moved to the US and settled in Atlanta, and devoted himself uniquely to photo-realistic portrait painting on large (and very large) scales.

Rossin in front of his portraits of Jackie Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln

His portraits are included in the National Portrait Gallery (the American version, part of the Smithsonian), American universities (including Harvard Law School), State Capitol buildings, museums, and a Presidential Library; but also in the collections of companies and many private collections.

But they appear on the market only very rarely: people who acquire one of his portraits apparently want to hold on to it for a very long time.

His portrait of Maya Angelou (famous American poet) was used for a US Stamp, which became legendary. Not for the very good portrait on it, but because it has been taken out of circulation after it became clear that the US Postal Office put the wrong quote on it!

I have found evidence of only one sale of a work by him: at a charity auction for the Rotary Club, his portrait of the Rotary founder was sold for a whopping $170,000!

The present painting (which has kindly been confirmed by the artist as being an authentic work by him) dates to 1996, a year when he had an exhibition in Brussels (according to his Wikipedia page), and represents a crucial moment in his development as an artist. While he would mostly abandon painting anything but portraits soon afterwards, it is in this period that he perfected his photo-realistic style.

Even in 1995, just one year earlier, his works are still much less detailed and refined, and the compositions are a lot more boring and repetitive. This work though shows a perfection of the ideas and the style he had toyed around with for a few years, and while he would abandon most of the ideas afterwards, the style he had developed in the work for sale would bring him to the success he now enjoys.

Comparing a detail from these older works to similar details from the work for sale (which has the same dimensions) shows the difference, and the quality of the current one. The general composition is also a lot more complex, not a simple displacement of the basic image all over the canvas but an interaction of the three depictions of the same model.

What's it worth? Well, I'm obviously not objective, and the lack of previous sales makes it harder as well. But it's a popular subject (goodlooking female nudes), in a great format (large enough to be impressive, but small enough to fit in every home), by a well-established artist with a rich clientèle (reselling this in the States may be an interesting prospect if you don't want to own it for yourself) but with more than enough scarcity to make it something special. Bernaerts is, together with De Vuyst, one of the two leading art auction houses in Flanders. The 1,500 lower estimate seems to me a very, very cautious approach...

All images on this page are "copyright" Ross Rossin.

Third offer: result

I made a third offer, at DVC in Ghent, for what they described as a "German School, 16th or 17th century" Adoration, oil on copper, 35 by 28 cm, estimated at 700 to 1,000 Euro.

I was a bit amazed that an auction house in Flanders didn't recognise the style as that of Frans Francken II (by now well known to readers of this blog). Francken II (and by extension all the Franckens) commonly reused their more succesful compositions many times. For this one, I only found two other examples.

First I found this lot from Christie's, sold as Studio of Francken II (perhaps Hieronymus Francken II or Ambrosius Francken II) in 1997 for £2,875. It is a simplified version (loses some parts of the composition), but somewhat better painted in some details.

Some further searching revealed what may be the original version of this painting, this time in a flower garland. The flowers are attributed to the Circle of Jan Brueghel II, and the interior again to the Studio of Francken II. It sold at Christie's in 2002 for a nice £18,800. It has the exact same composition as the one that was for sale at DVC, with the seethrough to the palm tree on the right, and the God-the-Father above, which were both missing in the 1997 copy.

Another version, very comparable to the one for sale, is, according to the RKD, kept in the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, but I can't find it on the website of that museum.

I would estimate the one for sale at DVC at at least $2,000.

And sure enough, I lost it as it ended at 2,200 Euro, which seems to be a correct, somewhat low price but no longer a true bargain.