London Sales Preview

Roy Lichtenstein Egon Schiele Oskar Kokoschka Claude Monet Alberto Burri Derain Paul Gauguin Amedeo Modigliani

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After the disappointing November auctions in New York, Sotheby’s wanted to put together "a well-edited sale with estimates attractively pitched at this market level. We were not expecting to be able to put together a huge blockbuster sale," says the firm’s Impressionist and Modern expert Helena Newman, who adds that the pound’s historic low against the euro in December, when consignments were being finalized, made it harder to pitch to European and U.S. vendors. On the upside, she notes that the pound’s weakness could make estimates in the currency attractive to global buyers and so "work in the house’s favor when it comes to selling."

In Sotheby’s Imp/mod sale, the first of the two-week season, the house has an important and rare-to-market Amedeo Modigliani. Caryatide, 1913 (est. £6-8 million; $8.8-11.8 million) — one of the artist’s six known full-figure treatments of the subject, three of which are in museums — last appeared in October 1980 at Sotheby’s New York, where it brought $260,000. Other highlights include works by two Viennese masters: Egon Schiele’s watercolor-and-charcoal Self-Portrait, 1910, below (est. £500-600,000; $733-879,000), and Oskar Kokoschka ’s Istanbul I, 1929 (est. £1.2-1.8 million; $1.7-2.6 million), part of a series of cityscapes by the artist. Sotheby’s is also offering a late René Magritte, Souvenir de voyage, 1958, which depicts the Leaning Tower of Pisa supported by a feather (est. £400-600,000; $586-879,000), and André Derain’s color-infused Fauvist landscape Environs de Collioure, 1905 (est. £1.4-1.8 million; $2-2.6 million).

Despite the economic slowdown, Christie’s managed to snag some pricey property for its Imp/mod evening event. Claude Monet’s Dans la prairie, 1876 (est. in the region of £15 million; $22 million) — which portrays the artist’s wife, Camille, wearing a festive hat and reclining in a flower-filled Argenteuil meadow — has made several auction appearances, most recently in November 1999 at Sotheby’s New York, where it realized $15.4 million, and before that in June 1988, when it fetched a then-record £14.3 million ($25.4 million) at Sotheby’s. The sale contains two other museum-quality pieces: L’Abandon (Les Deux amies), an 1895 brothel scene by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (est. £5-7 million; $7.3-10.2 million), which last sold in June 1972 at Sotheby’s London for £150,000 ($382,500), and Les Couturières, Édouard Vuillard’s startlingly avant-garde 1890 interior showing his mother and sister sewing corsets for the family’s business. The latter, which was on loan for a year at London’s National Gallery, carries an estimate of £5.5 million to £7.5 million ($8-11 million), which reflects the artist record $7,993,000 earned by Fillettes se promenant, 1891, at Christie’s New York last May. Among other notable lots are a second Monet, his La Promenade d’Argenteuil, 1872 (est. £3.5-5 million; $5-7.3 million), and the disarmingly modern Les Dindons, Pont-Aven, left, Paul Gauguin’s 1888 Breton landscape with a pair of wild turkeys (est. £2-3 million; $2.9-4.4 million).

The Christie’s Impressionist and modern director Giovanna Bertazzoni declares herself "cautiously optimistic" about the coming auction. Given the "challenging" combination of a weaker market and falling pound, "we had to take the whole consignment process with clients to a new level this season," says the specialist, who wooed potential consignors by inviting them to tour Yves Saint Laurent’s and Pierre Bergé’s art-and-objet-stuffed Rive Gauche duplex, the contents of which are being sold at Christie’s and Pierre Bergé & Associés in Paris later this month. "We have a good series of pictures to offer," says Bertazzoni. How the market will react and what’s going to happen, we just don’t know."