London Sales Preview

Sotheby's

J. M. W. Turner, "Pope's Villa at Twickenham" (1808) (est. £5–7 million; $10–14 million)

Andy Warhol Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Gerhard Richter Joseph Mallord William Turner Francis Bacon Lucio Fontana Yves Klein

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Anyone planning a visit to London for the summer auctions should check the calendar, because the schedule has changed quite radically. The 19th-century European-art sales, for example, have disappeared from June; Sotheby’s held its sale on May 30, while Christie’s has moved theirs to July, and both houses have pushed their Impressionist and modern sales to the end of June.

The season begins, as it traditionally has, with British art. Christie’s offers Victorian works in its June 5 sale. The Watts Gallery, near Guildford, Surrey, once the home and studio of the painter George Frederic Watts, has consigned two works to raise funds, including Albert Joseph Moore’s Jasmine, 1880, a superb Aesthetic movement painting estimated to fetch a record £600,000 to £800,000 ($1.2–1.6 million).

Russian art maintains its midmonth slot with sessions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams and MacDougall’s. The following week is dominated by the Christie’s sale of the Simon Sainsbury collection, the overflow from which will be in the house’s Imp/mod auction. Among these later-appearing Sainsbury lots is Collioure. Les balancelles, 1887 (est. £1.8–2.5 million; $3.5–5 million), by Paul Signac. Christie’s also has eight works from the German Hoh collection.

Several major consignments in the Imp/mod category were still expected as this story went to press, pending the outcome of New York’s May sales, but the lineup is already impressive and the mood confident after successful London sales in February. Among Sotheby’s highlights is Alberto Giacometti’s painting Tête noire (Diego), 1951 (est. £3–4 million; $6–8 million), which could fly if New York’s Giacometti offerings do well; and a Picasso Mousquetaire. Buste, 1968. Estimated at £3–4 million ($6–8 million). Sotheby’s also has a group of modernist works from an anonymous Scandinavian collection (total est. £8 million; $16 million), including several small sculptures by Giacometti, Julio González and Henri Laurens. In this group as well is Linear Construction in Space No. 2, 1969 (est. £100–150,000; $200–300,000) by Naum Gabo, whose work has been attracting the attention of Russian collectors.

The major change to the agenda: a series of contemporary-art sales that spills into July. Among Sotheby’s top lots in this category is Francis Bacon’s ravishing small Study for Head of George Dyer, 1967, estimated at £8 million plus ($16 million), and a dozen works from the Helga and Walther Lauffs collection by such postwar European names as Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni, with a total estimate of more than £10 million ($20 million).

Leading Christie’s contemporary offerings is Lucio Fontana’s La Fine di Dio, 1964 (estimate on request), riding high on the record £10.3 million ($20 million) fetched by another work from this series at Sotheby’s last February. A surprise could be in store when Antonio López Garcia’s panoramic view of Madrid, which is considered his masterpiece, goes on the block with an estimate of £1.5 million to £2 million ($3–4 million)—far in excess of his current $800,000 record.

At Phillips de Pury & Company expect the usual cutting-edge fare but also some blue-chip offerings in the form of Warhol’s Nine Multicolored Marilyns (Reversal Series), 1979–80 (£2.2–2.8 million; $4.3–5.5 million), and Gerhard Richter’s Claudius, 1986 (£4–6 million; $8–12 million), which set a record for an abstract work by Richter when it sold for $1.9 million at Christie’s New York in 2001.

By July the calendar will have reverted to normal with the Old Masters sales. Sotheby’s has decided this is where a major painting by J. M. W. Turner belongs. The landscape Pope’s Villa at Twickenham, 1808 (£5–7 million; $10–14 million) is joined by 10 works (total estimate £2.1–3.3 million; $4.1–6.5 million) from the estate of the independent-minded German collector Gustav Rau. Christie’s responds with a rediscovered Jean-Antoine Watteau, several quintessentially British 18th-century portraits and, from the holdings that the late modern art collector Peter Meyer inherited from his father, a group of Dutch pictures, including examples by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Josefsz van Goyen.

Sotheby's Imp/Mod
Christie's Imp/Mod
Sotheby's Contemporary
Sotheby's Old Masters
Christie's Old Masters & British
Christie's Contemporary
Phillips Contemporary
Simon Sainsbury

"London Sales Preview" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.