Top Lots Flop at Sotheby’s Imp/Mod Sale

Tamara de Lempicka Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Joan Miro Marc Chagall Claude Monet Camille Pissarro Piet Mondrian

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But the statistics in the $61,370,500 sale disappointed in the sold-by-value category, earning barely 59 percent by value, compared with 81 percent by lot.

As if in a different world, last November’s sale realized $223,812,500, when 45 of the 70 lots offered sold.

Sotheby’s tried hard this challenging round to deliver a positive impression and a high percentage sold rate. It partially succeeded.

Both of the sale’s top-estimated lots failed, however. The Pablo Picasso cover lot, La fille de l’artiste à deux ans et demi avec un bateau (1938), tanked at $12.25 million (est. $16–24 million), with just one bid. Alberto Giacometti’s rare-to-market but hopelessly overestimated bronze Le Chat from a 1959 cast expired at $14.75 million (identical estimate) without a single genuine bid in the sedate sales room.

Both of these rare objects are by far the most expensive lots of the week, indicating, at least on the modern side, that price points are still a moving target.

Episodic gloom aside, the petite sale took close to an hour to complete, thanks to competitive bidding on a surprising number of pieces, including the outstanding top lot, Piet Mondrian’s Minimal beauty, Composition in Black and White, with Double Lines (1934), which sold to an unidentified bidder in the salesroom who vanquished at least five other contenders to score the work for $9,266,500, about double its pre-sale estimates of $4–6 million. Dealer David Nahmad was the underbidder.

Other overachievers included an Impressionist jewel from the storied H.O. Havemeyer collection, an early champion of the French Impressionists: Claude Monet’s serene Voilier sur le petit bras de la Seine, Argenteuil, which Nahmad snagged for a toppy $3,498,500 (est. $1.2–1.8 million). The work had been on extended loan at the Metropolitan Museum since 1994.

“Tonight the strength was very much in the Impressionist area,” said London dealer James Roundell, one of the underbidders on the riverside Monet.

Asked why he stopped bidding for his anonymous client, Roundell said, “It’s a question of value. We like low estimates, but we don’t like them too low,” indicating that his client wasn’t prepared to leapfrog pre-sale expectations, a strategy that would have been a given in the previous bull market.

Another Havemeyer offering, Camille Pissarro’s Inondation à Pontoise (1882), which the famed couple acquired in Paris in 1901 from dealers Durand-Ruel, sold for $2,994,500 (est. $900–1.2 million) to a telephone bidder.

Fresh-to-market works were especially prized, as evidenced by the quartet of Art Deco–era paintings by Tamara de Lempicka. A former star of Part II day sales, the Polish-born artist has rarely been so heavily represented in an evening auction.

Consigned without any hint of financial guarantee by fashion heavy Wolfgang Joop, all four sold for a combined total of $13.8 million, including the sultry Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (1932), which sold on the phone for a record $4,898,500 (est. $4–6 million). It last sold at a Part II Sotheby’s New York sale in November 1995 for $552,500.

Last night, it was underbid by London private dealer Ivor Braka, who bid on behalf of his client, the Connecticut–based hedgefund magnate George Weiss, who sat next to him. Weiss is suing Christie’s in U.S. District Court in New York over a Francis Bacon self-portrait he consigned to the house last November. It failed to sell, and Weiss is claiming Christie’s promised to guarantee it for $40 million.

Braka came back for his client and nabbed de Lempicka’s edgy Portrait de la Duchesse de la Salle (1925) for $4,450,500 (est. $4–6 million).

Intercepted as he exited the sales room, Braka buoyantly quipped, “It was rock 'n' roll in the graveyard.”

But the market return for works sometimes referred to in the trade as “retreads” was mixed. Marc Chagall’s late and festive Le Jongleur de Paris (1969) sold for $2,882,500 (est. $2–3 million), making a snappy profit for its consignor, who’d paid $1,136,000 for it at Sotheby’s New York in May 2005.

But Joan Miro’s Figure, a 39¾-inch bronze from a 1981 lifetime cast, made $506,500 (est. $400–600,000), marking quite a come-down (or comeuppance) from the $992,000 it made at the same house in May 2007, when the market was still ascending.

When all was said and done, even Sotheby’s seemed at a loss to characterize the current market. Moments after the sale, Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern expert Simon Shaw said, “In the Impressionist field, the market found its level in the $2–5 million range, but in the modern, who knows how to value these great things?”

Several dealers criticized Sotheby’s for its overreaching estimates on the spurned top lots, especially the Giacometti cat. “There was nothing wrong with the piece,” said seasoned London dealer Thomas Gibson. “It was just too expensive. It should have been $8–12 million [not $16–24 million]. But the rest of the sale kicked the recession in the backside.”

The decent result cushioned the negative news that rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the firm's corporate credit rating a steep three notches to “BB-” or junk bond status, based on a “greatly reduced art auction market” and “a substantial increase in debt leverage.”

The Impressionist and modern evening action continues tonight at Christie’s.