The sale produced the fourth biggest art deal of the year out of Australia when it sold for £2.05 million, equal to around $A3.29 million, writes Terry Ingram.
NMP, which was taken over by Sotheby's in 2005, has either managed to satisfy a client with a luscious find, or add it to stock in which case it would have a show stopper for the Maastricht Antiques and Fine Art Fair at which it is an exhibitor next month.
NMP also enjoyed the kudos of outbidding five others (according to the ATG) on the work after having suffered financial pressure arising from the uncertain Old Master market.
Now that market, which Bonhams wants to add to substantially in a challenge to the two main global players, appears to be on the up.
Bonhams was way out with its £300,000 to £500,000 estimate on the work but then two works by the same 16th century Dutch artist had failed to sell recently. Could Noortman possibly secure a further margin on it? Yes, if favourable comparisons are being made of the Old Master market to the modern and contemporaries are sustained..
At all events Bonhams achieved the fourth place in the list of big deals when the hammer fell on the work at £1.8 million.
Noortman also buttressed Bonhams' turnover in buying the work and boosted Bonhams' reputation for finds in the process - even while giving Bonhams, from a great distance, an oblique entree to an Australian art find.
Similarly pulled from a Bonhams branch office sale, Oxford, a portrait of an old man by Velázquez sold for £2.6 million at the same OM sale.
The ATG, however, said the bid "left many in the saleroom underwhelmed" . Finds of Velazquez are very rare. The estimate was £2,000,000-3,000,000.
A third find, a King Richard II brass quadrant found in Australia by Bonhams failed to find a buyer at a Bonhams' clock and scientific instrument sale after also being much talked-about.
The second biggest deal of the year was the sale of books containing over 700 watercolours relating to early NSW to the State Library of NSW for $7.1 million.
Many of these works were copies, albeit contemporary, of the set in the Natural History Museum in London.
This sale was masterminded by Nicholas Lambourn, head of Christie's Travel department in London, and expedited by its Australian representative Ronan Sulich.
Like Sotheby's, which does not have an operation in Australia, Christie's was able to participate in finds made Down Under without the overheads of a big local operation.
Sotheby's Australia is a franchise of the Sotheby's group and stresses its independence from that group.
Christie's won the biggest deal of the year when it sold Picasso's Jeune fille endormie (Young girl sleeping) in London for the University of Sydney for the equivalent of $20.6 million including premium.
The year's third biggest great Australian art deal was handled by London dealer Angela Nevill, now no longer corporately tied to Roger McIlroy, the ex Christie's former head honcho, and now running his own independent company in Melbourne.
The acquisition was made at a sale held by Sotheby's in early July by Nevill for the gallery for the equivalent of $A5.8 million.
The major portion of the funds for the circa 1514-1515 work was supplied by Andrew Sisson who founded the Melbourne-based Balanced Equity Management in 1988.
The fifth biggest transaction of Australian interest was the sale at auction in London, Ontario (Canada) of a book of early colonial watercolours assembled by Major James Wallis in the age of Governor Macquarie.
This was knocked down for $C1.8 million equal to $C2.07 million with premium. The watercolours were sold on behalf of the estate of a couple who died without children, Gardner Galleries, the local London auction house which sold it has been reported as say.
It was a further purchase by the Mitchell Library making these top five Australian art deals all of an Old Master variety.
