Bid for the top

摘要

In 1796, Harry Phillips, the brightest pupil of James Christie, London's top auctioneer, left his mentor to set up his own auction house. He was a wild success from the start. In 1798 he sold 25 paintings from the estate of Queen Marie Antoinette; in 1813 the pictures of the bankrupt Earl of Kinnaird (including a Rubens, a Titian and a Poussin that are now in the National Gallery); in 1822 the furniture, tapestries and jewellery of Queen Caroline. Phillips knocked down the old masters of the deposed King Stanislaus of Poland in 1827, sold gilt furniture from Buckingham Palace on the orders of King William IV in 1836, and auctioned the studio pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1798 and 1822.