Old habits die hard

Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves

- Huon Mallalieu

ANTIQUE dealers are not very good at retiring. But then, many would claim that retirement is not very good for anyone. Dealers may close their galleries after a few decades, but generally they cannot break away entirely and continue to deal from home or act as advisers for a few favourite clients. Several have done so recently, perhaps discouraged from shopkeeping by lockdowns, as well as advancing age.

When I first met him half a century ago, Martyn Gregory was already dealing in English and Dutch watercolours from a shared gallery in Lancashire Court, then a blind alley off Bond Street, W1. Later, he moved to Bury Street, St James's, SW1, and made a speciality of China Trade paintings, that is 18th- and 19th-century works produced for Europeans and sometimes by them, in the Far East. These are often in a hybrid style that is all their own. Four years ago, he had a sale of his remaining watercolour stock at Christie's and he closed the gallery last year.

Now, he has had an auction of selected China Trade works at Bonhams, with a second tranche planned for next November. Some things went for less than he had paid for them, others well over what he would have asked, but the market and total were better than expected and all lots sold.

The 30-lot selection opened with three half-length portraits convincingly attributed to Jesuit artists working at the court of the Qianlong Emperor, one of them Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766). His subject has been identified as the half-brother of the Emperor, Prince Guogong (1733-65) (Fig 1), an important cultural figure who was in charge of the Household Workshop, with the Jesuits working under his eye. European elements are evident, especially in the facial modelling, but the full-frontal format is Chinese. It measured 194in by 25in and sold for $165,500.