London salerooms produced a record series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions last week, but only just.
After the buzz of expectation developed by the London salerooms, they did produce a record series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions last week, but only just. Mid-way with the fifth and final session, the sales total crept after dark previous record of £298 million, occur June 2008, finally winding up at £303 million. There have been no celebrations, however, and a palpable air of disappointment pervaded. Strip away the auctioneers’ commissions, and also the total was nearer £250 million, below the £300 to £450 million estimate for that series.
Things began badly at Bonhams, which sold none of their top lots. A Chagall painting technique, full of figures and was estimated to fetch at least £1.2 million. But buyers were delay because it was believed to have been painted over 30 years, and it bore a stamped rather than hand-written signature.
Although Sotheby’s sold the majority of its top lots, it was touch and go for a number of them. The much-heralded Manet self-portrait sold, albeit for a record £22.4 million, on just a single bid on the low estimate from Franck Giraud, the dealer who bid an archive £32 million with respect to the Qatar royal family in the Yves Saint Laurent sale last year for a Matisse still life. And Russian interest seemed to have rescued a highly estimated Soutine portrait of a seated valet. The only visible bidder was Alex Lachman, a dealer from Cologne who advises Russian collectors, and who bought it about the low estimate for £7.9 million.
Occasionally, Russian or Ukrainian bidders locked horns with Americans to push the bidding up over estimates and also to record levels for Andre Derain, whose fauvist landscape in the Ambroise Vollard collection sold for £16.5 million, and for a drawing technique by Matisse, whose reclining nude sold for £5.9 million.
Christie’s main sale set a brand new record for any UK auction at £153 million, but was, none the less, below its target. This was due mainly towards the failure of the Monet painting for which £30 million had been asked. Neither the composition, a lily pond partly obscured by mist, nor the data that it had been available privately prior to the auction, helped to warrant the price. Another flop would be a rare, early, with no doubt historically interesting painting by the German expressionist, Otto Dix, that Christie’s hoped to obtain a record £4 million. However, this was a case of something being just too rare for that market. The painting didn't seem like a typical Dix, also it, too, was unsold.
Carrying your day for Christie’s was Picasso’s blue period portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, which could now be coming to the China. You purchased it , for £34.8 million for an anonymous client by Jen Lyn Low, a Christie’s expert in Chinese pieces of art, recently seconded to the Impressionist department to develop its business relations in Asia. However it hardly sparked a bidding war. Probably the most bullish area of the market was for late Picasso. Le Baiser (1969), a typically primitive depiction of the couple embracing, had been sent available by US newsprint magnate Peter Brant who had paid £2.8 million for this in 2003, a record for a late Picasso. Last week it sold for £12 million.
Neglecting to reap any rewards were a Matisse paper cut-out that were unsold in New York last November with a $3 million to $4 million estimate, and was unsold again in spite of its vastly reduced £500,000 ($760,000) estimate, along with a portrait of the showgirl by van Dongen that went through the roof in 2007 when it sold for quadruple estimate £1.7 million, but found no buyer this time around to match that price.
Such failures, though, were the exception as a very solid 80 per cent of the works offered a week ago found buyers. The fragility shown at the top end from the market was because the estimates were too high. High estimates are going to meet sellers’ expectations, and therefore are often the consequence of competition between your salerooms when trying to influence sellers where you can sell. With oil disasters and fears of a double-dip recession, the marketplace has perhaps changed from two months ago, when the estimates were set still within the euphoria developed by $100 million prices for Picasso and Giacometti.
Last week saw a correction to that euphoria; a correction that will have to be taken into consideration for the next big Impressionist sales in Ny this autumn.
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