LONDON—Elizabethan portraits accounted for five of the top-ten selling lots at Christie’s sale of the contents of Cowdray Park (Sept. 13-15). Four were full-length female portraits which had belonged to Lord Willoughby de Broke of Compton Verney until 1921, when they were bought by the second Viscount Cowdray. The most valuable, a portrait once thought to have been of Elizabeth I by Marcus Gheeraerdts, sold above the estimate for £325,250 ($515,200), to the Tudor and Stuart portrait dealer Mark Weiss. “It’s the most spectacular painting of its kind,” said Weiss. “I know of no other more elaborate costume piece than this. I was prepared to pay a million pounds for it.”The sale also featured paintings by James Ferrier Pryde, led by The Red Ruin, 1910, which sold for a record £91,250 ($143,810), compared with an estimate of £80,000/120,000; Queen Elizabeth’s Tree, which sold for £39,650 ($62,488) on an estimate of £40,000/60,000; and The Deserted Garden, ca. 1909, which sold for £79,250.
