Sotheby's (New York)

(28 cm), [120] pp. (some folding), illustrations (most in colour). 46 lots. Publisher’s brown cloth, pictorial dust jacket. - Nearly fifty Old Master and Modern drawings collected by the Kentucky horse breeder John R. Gaines (1928-2005) “over the past fourteen years”. “I have been asked at various times why my collection does not include works by the lesser Masters as well as the great names. I tried this approach over the years and, for whatever the reason, it just never worked for me. I discovered that only ‘the best of the rest’ is what pipped me to still pastures and was the only music that my heart cared to hear” (quotations from Catalogue preface). The 46 drawings realised $21.28 million, setting records for 26 artists, including Leonardo da Vinci (“Child with a Lamb” bought for $3.6m by Adrian Ward-Jackson, on behalf of the Getty Museum). The Getty also bought drawings by Canaletto, Delacroix, and Agostino Carracci; the ex-Chatsworth Rembrandt and two drawings by Raphael were purchased by Stanley Moss on behalf of the Ian Woodner Family Collection; Fra Bartolommeo’s “Virgin and Child” was bought by the New York collector Peter Sharp; and Watteau’s “Three Studies of the Head of a Young Girl” was bought for a record $852,500 by the art agent Andrea de Socebran. ¶ Dust jacket worn. Unmarked copy. No Price list.