Imp-Mod Surges, Contemporary Sags in London

LONDON—Set in a climate of shaky global markets, this week’s two key Impressionist and Modern sales in London performed surprisingly well, while Christie’s postwar and contemporary evening sale on Wednesday evening, despite a near-record-breaking Francis Bacon painting, showed unmistakable signs of the market’s weakening.

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art and Art of the Surreal
The abbreviated week got off to a good start at Christie’s overloaded sales of Impressionist and Modern Art (97 lots) and Art of the Surreal (34 lots) on February 4. One hundred of those works (76 percent of lots offered) found buyers and racked up a convincing £105,372,000 ($207,372,096), against a pre-sale estimate of £89.1–126.2 million. It was the auction house’s second-highest result for a single evening’s sales in Europe, exceeded only by last June’s £120 million Impressionist and Modern sale in London.

A whopping 83 percent of lots sold went to Europeans (including the U.K., Russia, and so-called CIS states), with only 15 percent to Americans and 2 percent to Asians.

The selection skewed to decidedly European tastes, especially German and Austrian works such as Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s racy landscape with cavorting nudes, Akte im Freien (Drei badende Frauen) from 1913, which fetched £3,044,500 (est. £1–1.5 million), making it even more of a Euro-centric evening.

The top lot, Pablo Picasso’s underwhelming portrait of his mistress and muse Dora Maar, Femme au chapeau from 1938, sold to an anonymous European collector for a surprisingly high £5,732,500 (est. £2.5–3.5 million). The painting last appeared at auction at Sotheby’s New York in November 2002, when it was bought in against a low estimate of $4 million.

With the atmosphere in the sales room weighed down by seemingly countless second-rate works that would normally find harbor in a day sale, excitement was ever so brief. A suite of eight Egon Schiele works on paper, all of them deaccessioned by New York’s Neue Galerie to help pay off last year’s $135 million purchase of Gustav Klimt’s 1907 masterpiece Adele Bloch-Bauer I was the highlight, with the six works that sold realizing £11.7 million ($22.9 million), almost twice the low estimate of £6.1 million for the entire group.

London dealer Richard Nagy scooped up Madchenakt mit Pelzbesetztem Mantel for £468,500 (est. £300–400,000) and the sultry Mutter und Kind for £2,832,500 (est. £1.5–2 million). Ali Can Ertug, a Sotheby’s vice president for business development, took three other Schieles from the trove, including the haunting self-portrait Selbstbildnis, Kopf, for £2,036,500 (est. £700,000–1 million). Zurich dealer Doris Ammann outgunned fierce competition to win Liegende Frau mit roter Hose und stehender weiblicher Akt for £2,484,500 (est. £2-3 million).

Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art
Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale on February 5 offered better material on the whole than its arch rival—and a tighter editing of property. The 77 lots produced a rousing total of £116,699,900 ($230,517,312), trumping the pre-sale estimate of £81,090,000–112,110,000 million and scoring the highest-ever tally for a Sotheby’s sale held in Europe.

European buyers again dominated, grabbing 67 percent of the lots sold, followed by Russia with 15 percent, and a scant 13 percent from the U.S. Asia accounted for 3 percent. (Christie’s lumps the Russians in with Europeans in its statistical breakdowns; Sotheby’s keeps them separate.)

Five works exceeded £5 million, including the record-shattering top lot, Franz Marc’s stunning Blaue Reiter composition Weidende Pferde III (Grazing Horses III) from 1910, which sold to a telephone bidder for £12,340,500 (est. £6-8 million). “I went to £9.2 million,” said Alan Hobart of London’s Pyms Gallery, one of the underbidders, “and I thought it was a very good price, but obviously my valuation was wrong.”

Alexej von Jawlensky’s color-charged Schokko (Schokko mit Tellerhut) was another record-breaker, fetching £9,428,500. It last sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2003 for a then-record $8.3 million.