Sotheby’s and Christie’s battle it out in the June sales amid a fluctuating supply of masterpieces, says Colin Gleadell.
The art market seemed to be treading water last week as London’s summer auctions of Impressionist and Modern art rang up £287 million of sales, better than the last two summers, but still lagging behind 2008 and 2010.
Assembling Impressionist and Modern art auctions is difficult because the supply of masterpieces is unpredictable, and the June sales are the most difficult for Sotheby’s and Christie’s because they follow New York’s May sales so closely.
This time, Sotheby’s had the better supply. Four Impressionist paintings, including three by Monet, from the collection of the late Ralph C Wilson, owner of the Buffalo Bills American Football team, contributed £21 million to their main sale total of £122 million. One of these, a view of Antibes, sold to a Russian buyer for a mid-estimate £7.9 million – three times the price Wilson bought it for in 1996 and a record for Monet’s views of Antibes.
The strongest price for Monet, though, was for a later water lily painting that sold for £31.7 million – the second-highest price for a Monet at auction. The anonymous seller bought the painting in 2000 for $21 million (£14 million). Before the sale, there was speculation that Chinese bidding, encouraged by the first Monet exhibition in China at the K11 art mall in Shanghai, would be a key factor, and indeed the bidding was between American and Chinese representatives of Sotheby’s, with the former emerging victorious.
Elsewhere, apart from the purchase of a floating red cockerel by Chagall, Chinese interest was hard to detect. South Asian interest in the sale emerged briefly when Indian biotech billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla bid for a Sixties painting of the artist’s studio by Picasso. But he was outgunned by New York dealer William Acquavella, who bought it for £3.5 million.
The Picasso was one of a number of works from the estate of the late art dealer Jan Krugier, which added more than £20 million to the sale total.
Some of these works had been unsold, with over-ambitious estimates at Christie’s in New York last year, and were now offered by Sotheby’s at a more realistic level. A 1911 semi-abstracted landscape by Kandinsky, for example, previously unsold with a $20 million estimate, now sold to a Russian buyer for £5.6 million ($9.5 million).
One of the most hotly contested works of the evening was a unique sculpture of a rampant bull by Picasso that Krugier had acquired from Marina Picasso. Half a dozen bidders chased it, including Acquavella and the Gagosian galleries, before it fell for £1.8 million – six times the estimate – to the well-connected New York dealer Dominique Levy. Levy was also flexing her muscles for the evening’s second-highest lot, a 1927 abstract by Piet Mondrian, but was outbid as the work sold for £15.2 million, the second-highest price for a Mondrian at auction.
After Sotheby’s had sold all but four lots, there seemed little cause for concern for Christie’s, which had also secured works from notable collections. Of nine works from the collection of Viktor and Marianne Langen, seven were sold, reaping £22.8 million. This included a relief made from corrugated card, fabric, nails and wood in 1920 by Kurt Schwitters, which tripled estimates to sell for a record £14 million.
Surrealism has always sold well at Christie’s, and here a Magritte gouache, bought in 1993 for £161,000, sold for £2.2 million, while a tall bronze take on the Mona Lisa’s smile came close to a sculpture record for Magritte selling to art advisors Gurr Johns for £902,500.But the sale was not so strong in Impressionist pictures. The only example to excite competition was a Normandy coastal scene by Monet which was pursued by Mr Poonawalla, but bought by the Richard Green Gallery at the top estimate of £2.9 million.
There were also too many Giacomettis. Of the eight works offered in one sale, half were unsold. A large-format painting of his wife, Annette, should have made its £3.5 million estimate after a similarly sized portrait of Giacometti’s brother sold for £20 million last November; but it didn’t. La Main, an emaciated outstretched arm, should have made its £10 million estimate after another bronze from the edition had fetched £16 million in 2010 – but it didn’t either. Perhaps it was the resistance to rising prices, or the rejection of unsettling imagery.
Either way, Christie’s under-par £85 million sale demonstrated that it is not just supply in this market that is unpredictable, but also demand from the private buyers they are targeting.
telegraph.com.uk
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