Impressive Results at Christie’s Modest Russian Sale

NEW YORK—Christie’s two-session sale of Russian art on April 18 was a much more modest affair than Sotheby’s three-session extravaganza earlier in the week. Christie’s sale included only 294 lots, versus Sotheby’s 539, and had virtually no icons to speak of, but it earned an impressive $17,595,738, well above pre-sale expectations of $9–12 million. Altogether 253 lots found buyers, a solid total of 86 percent both by dollar amount and by number of lots.

In the morning session, which was devoted to paintings, the star was Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin’s The Forest Clearing (1896), which sold to a telephone bidder for $3,177,000 (est. $1–1.4 million), an auction record for the artist. Painted only two years before Shishkin’s death, it is considered one of his most important late paintings. A group of 14 works by Nikolai Konstantinovitch Roerich consigned by the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University to raise money for acquisitions also did well, totaling $2,023,650. Chief among them were Heat of the Earth (1918), which made $769,000 (est. $120–180,000); Rostov Kremlin (1922), which sold to an online bidder for $657,000 (est. $350–450,000); and Sketch for Ladoga Series, which made $385,000 (est. $40–60,000). Those who want to see what all the fuss is about should go to the museum devoted to Roerich’s work in New York.

The painting that was expected to bring the highest price at the auction failed to sell, however. Alexandr Iakovlev’s Loge de Théâtre de Pékin, a work from his theater series depicting a group of men watching a performance at a Chinese theater, was estimated to bring $1.8–2.5 million, but bidding stalled at $1.6 million.

The second session was dominated by silver-gilt-and-cloissoné pieces. An 11-piece punch bowl set made by Feodor Rückert for Ovchinnikov, a competitor of Fabergé, sold for $959,400 (est. $200–300,000) to a telephone bidder. The set was last on the market in 1930, when it was purchased at auction in Shanghai by a white Russian émigré family.

An eight-piece vodka set, also by Rückert, made a hefty $735,400 (est. $70–90,000). And several smaller items also soared past their pre-sale estimates, including a Fabergé cigarette case that sold for $181,000 (est. $10–15,000) and a tea service decorated with stylized foliage that brought $301,000 (est: $40–60,000).

The most charming lot in the sale was a very rare and large jeweled carved nephrite elephant from Fabergé (c. 1900), which brought $601,000 (est. $300–500,000). The ten-inch-long object was cut from a single block of stone and has rose-cut diamond-set eyes. The buyer — who had successfully jumped the bid on a jeweled maid-of-honor badge from $125,000 to $150,000 (est. $20–30,000; the sale price with buyer’s premium was $181,000) — drew applause when he tried the same gambit again, raising the bid from $260,000 to $500,000.

At the beginning of the auction, Christie's announced that a rare large porcelain propaganda vase (lot #248) made by the State Porcelain Factory in 1927 and depicting Red Army soldiers on one side and a field with peasants on the other was withdrawn from the sale. It had been estimated at $250–350,000.