Sotheby's evening Impressionist and Modern sale last week totaled €14.4 million ($19.3 million), landing in the high end of its pre-sale estimate of €11,184,000-15,705,000. The sell-through rate for the sale was 74 percent by lot, or 85.7 percent by value. Three works by Max Ernst anchored the sale, and all surpassed their estimates, with the top lot reaching $3.4 million. (To compare, Sotheby's Paris's two-day contemporary sale fetched €15.4 million, with a 100 percent sell-through rate.)
Ernst's 1927 oil painting "La Carmagnole" — which depicts strange characters in a grotesque and spirited battle — graced the catalogue's cover and was the evening's top lot, bounding past its high estimate of €1.8 million ($2.4 million) to reach €2.5 million ($3.4 million) including buyer's premium. Ernst's "Fleurs exotiques" from 1928, from a private Parisian collection, sold to an anonymous European collector for €840,750 ($1.1 million), against an estimate of €400-600,000. The third Ernst, "La Nature à l'Aurore" from 1937, went for €564,750 ($757,000), nicely outpacing its high estimate of €400,000.
Another hotly anticipated lot, Matta's 1942 work "The Hanged Man," boasted a prestigious provenance from MoMA. Purchased by New York's Byron Gallery, the work then wound up in a private European collection, and was loaned to the Pompidou Center in 1991 for a show about the Surrealist writer André Breton. Breton was a big influence on the Chilean painter, and "The Hanged Man" was inspired by Matta's friendship with Marcel Duchamp, providing an interesting French Surrealist connection to this work. The painting was estimated at €1-1.5 million ($1.3-2 million) and was purchased by an anonymous European collector for €1.8 million ($2.4 million).
A record for a Man Ray watercolor was established when his mysterious 1941 piece "Le Beau Temps" sold for €516,750 ($692,750) to an American collector (est. €120-180,000). A preparatory piece for his painting "Les Beaux Temps," this work shows Cubist and Surrealist influence while also anticipating Futurism and Pop Art in an apocalyptic landscape evoking the Second World War.
There were also some impressive results in drawings. Vincent van Gogh's "Tête d'homme au chapeau," which was included in the letters he sent to his fellow artist Emile Bernard, was estimated at only €40-60,000 ($54-80,000), but ended up selling for €192,750 ($258,400). Johannes Theodore Baargeld's small pen and ink drawing "Eine Frau / Frauen / Frauentüll" surpassed its diminutive estimation of €6-8,000 ($8-11,000) to sell for €72,750 ($97,500). The work was shown at MoMA way back in 1936 for the exhibition "Fantastic Art: Dada, Surrealism."