Asia Week

Sotheby’s
Contemporary Art Asia: China, Korea, Japan
291 lots offered
$23,210,525 sold total
18.2 percent unsold by value
19.9 percent unsold by lot
Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art
294 lots offered
$11,091,263 sold total
46.9 percent unsold by value
36.4 percent unsold by lot
Indian Art
88 lots offered
$5,106,875 sold total
21.2 percent unsold by value
26.1 percent unsold by lot
Indian and Southeast Asian Works of Art
152 lots offered
$7,026,751 sold total
17.6 percent unsold by value
30.3 percent unsold by lot

Doyle
The Regal Collection and Asian Works of Art
369 lots offered
$1,700,700 sold total
7 percent unsold by value
18 percent unsold by lot

Bonhams
Fine Japanese Art
245 lots offered
$546,600 sold total
17 percent unsold by value
15 percent unsold by lot

Christie's
Japanese and Korean Art
462 lots offered
$20,854,813 sold total
6 percent unsold by value
30 percent unsold by lot
The Imperial Wardrobe: Fine Chinese Costumes and Textiles
154 lots offered
$1,800,963 sold total
47 percent unsold by value
27 percent unsold by lot
The Meriem Collection: Important Chinese Snuff Bottles, part II
114 lots offered
$4,281,700 sold total
0 percent unsold by value
0 percent unsold by lot
Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art
370 lots offered
$20,216,925 sold total
13 percent unsold by value
23 percent unsold by lot
South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art
125 lots offered
$10,974,600 sold total
13 percent unsold by value
11 percent unsold by lot
Indian and Southeast Asian Art; The Scholar's Vision: the Pal Family Collection; The Ideal Image: Eight Masterpieces of Indian and Southeast Asian Art
519 lots offered
$21,939,488 sold total
2 percent unsold by value
37 percent unsold by lot

Francis Newton Souza Cai Guo Qiang Miyao Eisuke Ram Kumar Sayed Haider Raza Sotheby’s Sees Strong Sales in Hong Kong Who Is Ai Weiwei? Beijing City Symphony

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

It was standing room only at the firm’s Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art session. More mainland Chinese were present than in previous sales in this category, and they bought a wider range of material, including many archaic bronzes. The two most expensive items, however, went to Westerners. The London and New York dealer Richard Littleton snagged a Liao (10th–11th centuries) gilt-bronze figure of a Bodhisattva (est. $1–1.5 million) for a record $2,505,000. It had previously sold at Sotheby’s New York in December 1992 for $61,600 (est. $40–60,000). Rarity and provenance combined to make a Southern Song Dynasty (1127–79) Longquan celadon Kinuta vase (est. $800,000–1.2 million), reputedly from the collection of the tea master and daimyo Matsudaira Fumai (1751–1818), irresistible. The San Francisco–based Korean American high-tech entrepreneur Chong-Moon Lee outbid the London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi to win it for $2,281,000.

The session featuring the Chinese robes and textiles accumulated by Linda Wrigglesworth in her 30 years as a dealer in London, the first sale in the West devoted to this rarefied field, was the only one at Christie’s that day that was not an unqualified success. Much of the material with estimates below $100,000 brought strong prices, but only one of the six robes estimated at above $100,000, the Yongzheng (1723–35) or Qianlong (1736–95) imperial noblewoman’s kesi fur-lined winter surcoat (est. $250–350,000), sold—to an Asian private collector for $241,000.

Of the works by members of the midcentury Bombay Progressive Artists Group that appeared in Sotheby’s auction of Indian art on March 19, several important paintings by Ram Kumar were passed; prices for Francis Newton Souza and S. H. Raza remained stable; and M. F. Husain surpassed them all: His Untitled, from 1953, depicting a puppeteer using sticks to control a dancing couple (est. $200–300,000), went to an Indian dealer for $409,000.

At the house’s session that same day of Indian and Southeast Asian Works of Art, the standouts were Tibetan gilt bronzes, bought by American collectors. The cover lot, a circa 15th-century gilt-copper Buddha Vajrasana, from a European collection (est. $1.5–2.5 million), sold on the reserve for $1,385,000. Indian miniatures also attracted collectors, who were drawn to their rarity and drove prices substantially above their conservative estimates. A 1690–1700 Bikaner school illustration from the Bhagavata Purana showing a group of gopi (“cow-herding girls”) on the banks of the Yamuna River, from a private collection (est. $20–30,000), fetched $193,000.

It was at Christie’s March 20 and 21 sales, however, that price thresholds were crossed most spectacularly. In the house’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale, Husain prevailed again. Two phone bidders battled for one of his most important works, Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12 (est. $600–800,000), part of a series of paintings executed for the 1972 São Paulo Biennial portraying scenes from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. This picture was subsequently purchased by Chester and Davida Herwitz, of Massachusetts, among the earliest collectors of modern Indian art, who sold it in December 2000 at Sotheby’s New York to a Japanese collector for $52,500 (est. $40–60,000). This time, the winner paid $1,609,000, an auction record for a contemporary Indian painting.

The week ended on a high note, with records established for Indian and Khmer sculpture and Indian and Tibetan painting at the Ideal Image: Eight Masterpieces of Indian and Southeast Asian Art, an auction celebrating Christie’s 10th anniversary in the field. One discriminating collector acquired four items, including the star, a circa 475 sandstone Sarnath Buddha from the Gupta period (A.D. 280–550), which had been in a European private collection since 1949 (est. $600–800,000), for $4,969,000. A rare 1745–50 painting by the master Nainsukh of Guler, Musicians Playing a Raga for Balwant Dev Singh During the Rainy Season, portraying the artist among his attendants (est. $150–250,000), soared to $2,225,000, a record for any Indian painting, paid by an Indian collector in the room. Prices like these demonstrate the explosion in this market over the past two years.