LONDON— Led by a $30-million Claude Monet painting of a Venetian palace and two clusters of prime estate material, Sotheby’s scored a strong Impressionist and Modern evening sale, tallying £105,939,000 ($165,392,256). The total nicked pre-sale expectations of £74.5-104.9 million ($116.6-164.3 million) and handily outdistanced last June’s £75 million ($117.7 million) figures. While 13 of the 71 lots offered failed to find buyers for a decent buy-in rate by lot of 18 percent and nine percent by value, two pictures hurdled the ten-million-dollar mark and 29 made over one million, and two artist records were set.
According to Sotheby’s, bidders hailed from 33 countries, making the evening a kind of mini-United Nations of art buyers.
The sale got off to an explosive start with 28 works from the estate of Modernist Swiss collector Branco Weiss, ranging from Wassily Kandinsky’s Bauhaus-era “Ineinander,” a color-charged gouache, watercolor, and pen and ink on paper from 1928 that sold to a telephone bidder for £1,650,500 ($2,585,178) (est. £600-800,000); to Alexej von Jawlensky’s “Abstrakter Kopf: Tragik” (1928), a series based on the human face, which sold to the telephone for £1,202,500 ($1,883,476) (est. £250-350,000). The Jawlensky work had previously been acquired by Weiss at Sotheby’s New York in May 1978 for $21,000, a decidedly different era of the art market. In total, the Weiss trove contributed £15.9 million to the tally and also exceeded the high end of its £13.8-million estimate.
That buy-and-hold mentality of a committed, sharp-eyed collector also led to high-end sales for relatively lesser-known 20th-century artists such as Kurt Schwitters’ brilliantly executed and postcard-sized collage, “Ohne titel (Rote Rose)” (1933-34), which sold to an otherwise anonymous collector in the salesroom for £314,500 ($492,601), as well as Frantisek Kupka’s blazing, red-hued “Etude Sur Fond rouge” (1919), which made a record £1,930,500 ($3,023,742) (est. £700,000-1 million).
The steady beat of fresh material ticked on with a suite of seven Pablo Picasso offerings, ranging in date from 1901 to 1971, from the late expatriate American collector Stanley Seeger. Of those, “Guitare sur une Table,” a Cubist-styled charcoal on paper from 1912 that was once owned by Gertrude Stein, sold to a telephone bidder for a seeming pittance at £362,500 ($567,784) (est. £180-250,000) — Ivor Braka was the underbidder — while “Entreinte” (1971), a blazingly sexy coupling of figures in white wax crayon and pencil on red paper, also sold to a telephone for £3,106,500 ($4,865,711) (est. £1.5-2 million). Seeger acquired the late Picasso in red at Sotheby’s New York in May 2004 for $400,000.
Sales such as that of a petite-scaled Piet Mondrian, “Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue” (1927), revealed a downright hunger for striking modernist works, attracting at least four telephone bidders and finally selling for £9,266,500 ($14,514,119) (est. £4.5-6.5 million). The painting had last sold at Christie’s London in April 1990 for £1.76 million.
But taste wasn't confined to the 20th-century, as explicitly evidenced by Camille Claudel’s stunning, 37 1/4-inch unique bronze cast from 1893, “La Valse, Premier Version,” depicting two figures intertwined in a passionate dance, which sold for a record £5,122,500 ($8,023,371) (est. £1.5-2 million). The sale crushed the previous mark set last month at Sotheby’s New York when another, 18-inch bronze by the artist, “La Valse, Deuxième Version,” made $1.87 million.
Often rare to market, early Impressionist pictures also made waves, as evidenced by Claude Monet's busy plein air composition, "le Pont de Bois" (1872), first owned by Edouard Manet, which went for £6,242,500 ($9,777,628). It sold from the estate of philanthropist Gustav Rau to benefit the German Committee for UNICEF. Dr. Rau bought the Monet at Christie's London in November 1971 for £160,000.
Perhaps most surprising, outcome-wise, was the staggering sum for the light- and water-infused Claude Monet, “Le Palais Contarini” (1908), a pulsating and cropped view of a Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal, recently on view at Kunsthaus Zurich in the exhibition, “The Nahmad Collection” in 2011-12. The third-party guaranteed picture consigned by the powerful Nahmad art dealing family sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for the season’s top price, £19,682,500 ($30,828,700).
When the bidding reached £17 million and one of the telephone bidders seemed to hesitate at that sky-high price, auctioneer Henry Wyndham chimed in, “Do you want me to have a word with him?” The remark drew a big laugh (but not another bid).
Market gossip about the Nahmads getting the cover lots at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in a single season, as well as third-party guarantees for both pictures, did not make the Monet sale any less appetizing to buyers. The Nahmads acquired the luminous oil at Christie’s New York in April 1996 for $4,237,500; buttonholed outside Sotheby’s immediately after the sale, Ezra Nahmad wistfully remarked, “I regret letting it go.”
A few moments later, his brother David came outside and added, “I regret everything I let go. Paintings like this will never be available again and you’ll need to stick to junk art.”
Other color overheard outside Sotheby's: a disgruntled comment from Howard Shaw of New York's Hammer Galleries who bought the Nahmad's Modigliani, “Portrait of Paul Guillaume,” at Christie's Tuesday evening on behalf of a private American collector for £6,781,875 ($10,627,198). “The Wall Street Journal identified me as a middle-aged man.”
Surrealism also played a supporting role in Sotheby’s big evening, with Max Ernst’s other-worldly “La Horde” (1927) selling to New York’s Acquavella Galleries for 2,098,500 ($3,286,881) (est. £1.2-1.5 million). Asked how the Ernst market was fairing in light of the current retrospective in Basel at the Fondation Beyeler and the price tonight, William Acquavella quipped, “I don’t know, but I just bought one.”
Rene Magritte’s late and iconic “L’Idee,” with a floating green apple substituting for a man’s head, from 1966, sold for £4,562,500 ($7,146,244) (est. £1.8-2.5 million). “I bid towards the high estimate, but it didn’t help,” said Connecticut-based dealer/collector David Rogath as he hit the New Bond street sidewalk outside Sotheby’s. “I tried but I was blown away. It’s a great thing for a collector and it’s a bit frustrating for me but I understand why people bid more. The market is very strong,” he added.
The evening action resumes here next Tuesday at Christie’s in the red-hot, Post-War and Contemporary arena.