It was a similar story down the road in New Bond Street the night before, where Dutch and Flemish art dominated takings. The category was 90% sold and netted the lion’s share of the sale at £24.6m (with premium), against hopes of £16.8m-23.7m.
Among the crowd-pleasers was Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael’s (1628-82) panoramic view of the painter’s native city of Haarlem, looking over the low-lying bleaching fields. It tipped over top estimate to sell to a private collector in the room for £2.2m.
The painting, titled A Harleempje, had been seized by occupying German forces in Amsterdam and bought through Kajetan ‘Kai’ Mühlmann for the Führer Museum in Linz in 1941. Restituted after the war to the heirs of Ernst G Rathenau (who had emigrated to the US during the war), it was later sold to Otto Naumann, and appeared on the New York gallery’s stand at Maastricht before 2004.