The auction of 19th century paintings, which opened Dorotheum’s Classic Week on 7 June 2021, was marked by strong demand and excellent results. A four-part mountain panorama of the Koralpe by Markus Pernhart, the pioneer of Carinthian landscape painting, achieved the record price of 283,900 euros. The almost eight-metre long painting went to an Austrian private collection.

World record for Bashkirtseff
It was destroyed once, and is now a world record: Ukrainian-French painter Marie Bashkirtseff slashed with a knife what she regarded as a failed portrait of her cousin. After the artist’s early death in 1884, aged 24, the painting was restored and displayed in the exhibition “Kunst der Frau” at the Vienna Secession in 1910. The 149.700 euros it achieved at auction mark a world record price for a work by this artist.

A museum-quality early major work by Hans Makart, known as the “prince among painters”, was sold for an outstanding 325,956 euros, the second highest price ever paid for this artist. The painting “The Beggar (The Good-Natured Child)” by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller changed hands for 296,100 euros. Top prices include: Józef von Brandt’s “Returning Home” (€ 271,700). Paja Jovanovic’s “Palace Guard” garnered a stunning 137,500 euros.