LONDON — Sparked by a handful of standout offerings, Christie’s kicked off the London auction season with a rock solid Impressionist/Modern and Surrealism sale that tallied £134,999,400, or $213,299,052, easily hurdling pre-sale expectations of £86-127 million. Some 76 of the 88 lots sold, making for an impressively low buy-in rate of just 14 percent by lot and seven percent by value. Four lots made over ten million pounds; six hit over five million pounds; and all together, 28 exceeded one million pounds. In dollars, 40 of the 76 lots that sold made over one million dollars. For comparison's sake, the sale squashed last February’s result of £84.9 million ($136.3 million).
Five artist records were set, including one for the sleeper top lot, Henry Moore’s regal bronze, “Reclining Figure: Festival" (1951), which ignited a bidding war, driving the eight-foot-long figure to over £19 million ($30.1 million) (est. £3.5-5.5 million). Cologne-based dealer Alexander Lachmann, noted for his heavily Russian clientele, calmly outgunned two anonymous telephone bidders.
“It’s a good piece,” Lachmann said in his understated style as he exited the salesroom. Asked about his client, the dealer sharply exhaled, “no comment.”
The evening's price for the Moore crushed the previous record for the artist set by “Draped Reclining Woman” (1957-58), which hauled in £4.3 million ($8.4 million) at Christie’s London, back in June 2008. The storied bronze, from an edition of five (plus one artist proof), was sold by New York real estate magnate Sheldon Solow, a renowned Post-War art collector (as evidenced by the ground-floor gallery showroom of his 9 West 57th Street skyscraper, laden with Moores and Giacomettis). He had acquired “Reclining Figure: Festival" at Sotheby’s New York in May 1994 for a mere (!) $2 million.
A number of dealers present expressed astonishment at the price paid for the Moore, given that another version had been on offer in London last summer at the Masterpiece art fair with an asking price of nine million dollars. “There’s so much money in London,” said New York private dealer Nancy Whyte. “I can’t fathom that price for the Henry Moore.”
Whyte actively chased two star lots for clients, falling shy of both, citing the logical reason: “people have a limit.” One was the rather sedate but depressingly compelling Vincent van Gogh landscape, offered from the estate of Elizabeth Taylor, “Vue de l’asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy” (1889), which sold to a telephone bidder for £10.1 million ($16 million), over an estimate of £5-7 million. The history-laden picture was the subject of a lengthy yet unsuccessful legal battle in U.S. courts: A relative of Margarete Mauthner, the one-time German owner, had claimed it was illegally seized and sold by the Nazis and demanded its return. Francis Taylor, Liz’s father and a London-based American art dealer, acquired the work at Sotheby’s London way back in 1963 for a now-modest-seeming £92,000.
Other Taylor entries, including Edgar Degas’s early “Autoportrait” (circa 1857-58) and Camille Pissarro’s resplendently green landscape, "Pommiers a Eragny” (1894), sold well. The former went for £713,250 ($1,126,935) over an estimate of £350-450,000, while the latter fetched a ripe £2,953,250 ($4,666,135), on an estimate of £900,000-1.2 million.
Bigger game animated this marathon evening as a Cubist-styled abstraction by Juan Gris, “Le livre” (1914-15) — appropriately color-charged for current taste — barely squeaked by at £10.3 million ($16.3 million) (est. £12-18 million). It was one of the relatively few overestimated trophies here. The £9.2 hammer price (before the hefty add-on of buyer’s premium) only just barely made the lot's reserve, the secret minimum price a seller is willing to part with the picture.
But the outstanding, though "relined," Joan Miro Surrealist-period painting, “Painting-Poem (le corps de ma brune puisque je l’aime comme ma chatte habillee en vert salade comme de la grele c’est pareil)” (1925) was the true star of the evening. It drew at least four bidders, including New York dealer William Acquavella, powering the price to a record £16.8 million ($26.6 million) (est. £6-9 million). The best part is that it last sold at Christie’s New York back in November 1985 for $770,000, at the hammer.
Who knows what this Miro might have fetched if it was in pristine condition? The relining eliminated important writing by the artist on the back of this word-laden canvas. In any case, it played a large part of the £37 million portion of the "Art of the Surreal" section of Christie's evening, distantly trailed by the large-scaled and wildly provocative Paul Delvaux “le Nu et le mannequin (Le nu au mannequin)” (1947), which went to a telephone bidder for £3.4 million ($5.9 million) (est. £2-3 million). Nancy Whyte was the underbidder.
Though most of the endless evening resembled a primer for astute private collectors, there was plenty of bling-based trophy buying as well, as evidenced by the relatively late and uber-decorative Paul Signac “La Corne d’Or, Constantinople” (1907), which zoomed to £8.8 million ($13.9 million) (est. £4-6 million). It had last sold at Christie’s New York in May 2008 for $6.6 million, arguably at a time near the peak of the soon-to-deflate market. Someone profited handsomely from that astute speculation.
Another bling candidate was the large-scaled Robert Delaunay “Tour Eiffel” (1926), a late date for the artist’s iconic image. It sold to a telephone bidder for a record £3.7 million ($5.9 million) (est. £2.5-2.5 million).
And finally, at a lesser, though more uplifting scale, the recently deceased Surrealist painter and poet Dorothea Tanning, the widow of Max Ernst who died in New York last week at the age of 102, turned a posthumous record as the small-scaled, exquisite oil, “Le Miroir” (1950) sold for £217,250 ($343,255) (est. £50-80,000).
The evening action for Impressionist and Modern fare resumes Wednesday at Sotheby’s.
To see some of the star lots from Christie's London's "Impressionism/Modern and Surreal" sale, click on the slide show.