London Sales Preview

June 23—Christie’s

Impressionist & modern

June 24—Sotheby’s

Impressionist & modern

June 25—Sotheby’s

Contemporary

June 30—Christie’s

Postwar & contemporary

July 2—Phillips de Pury & Co.

Contemporary

July 7—Christie’s

Old Masters & 19th-century European

July 8—Sotheby’s

Old Masters

Cy Twombly Alberto Giacometti Joan Miro Lucio Fontana Yves Klein Roberto Matta Claude Monet Pieter Brueghel

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

"It’s a big challenge, gathering property right now," says Christie’s postwar and contemporary head Francis Outred. "Sellers are just making sure they’re making the right choice."

With demand slack for anything but top-tier works, the firms are not only slimming down their formerly overstuffed sales, but downsizing themselves as well. Christie’s, for instance, merged its Old Masters and 19th-century art departments. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have also ratcheted up their private sales, pitching them as ways to transact deals beyond the glare of salesroom lights.

Those pieces that are making it to the block are arriving with reasonable estimates. On June 23, for instance, Christie’s is offering a Blaue Reiter bargain that would have been unlikely in 2008, when the craze for German Expressionism was at its peak. The cover lot of the house’s Impressionist and modern evening session is Franz Marc’s 1910 Springende Pferde, a fresh-to-market scene of prancing horses that has been in a European collection since 1937. Despite considerable crossover potential — its epic size, 58¼ by 63¼ inches, might attract contemporary collectors who favor wall-hogging works — the picture is estimated at £3 million to £4 million ($4.4-5.9 million), giving it a long way to gallop to reach the artist’s auction record, £12,340,500 ($25 million), achieved by another horse painting at Sotheby’s London in February 2008.

Christie’s is also maintaining modest expectations for Claude Monet’s Au Parc Monceau, 1878. The light-dappled picture, which epitomizes the artist’s eye for atmospheric detail, was last auctioned at the house’s London branch in 2001, when Mallett‘s Henry Neville nabbed the canvas for £3,705,000 ($5.3 million). Having originally belonged to the Berlin collectors Ludwig and Margret Kainer before becoming part of a forced sale of Jewish property in 1935, it was one of the first restituted works to appear at auction. The house has resisted the temptation to raise the ante on the painting, instead estimating it at just £3.5 million to £4.5 million ($5.2-6.7 million). "We need to restore confidence," says department head Giovanna Bertazzoni. "I prefer to have a very tight sale and produce a lively atmosphere and get at least four or five people bidding."

Just such heated rivalry can be expected for two pictures by a couple of the major names in Surrealism. Given how well works by artists associated with the movement have sold recently, Joan Miró’s 1917 landscape Mont-roig, le pont (est. £400-600,000; $593-890,000) and Roberto Matta’s decidedly abstract Prince of Blood (Tragiptyc), 1943 (est. £300-400,000; $445-593,0000) should be contest-worthy.

In another sign of the new caution characterizing the art market, the makeup of the Sotheby’s June 24 evening sale was still a bit of a mystery when this issue headed to press, as putative consignors put off committing their property until the results from New York’s May Imp/mod sales were known. "People will wait till the last possible minute — that’s the trend we’re seeing," says the Sotheby’s London specialist Helena Newman. "[On the other hand,] there are some very hungry buyers right now." Among the pieces that Newman expects to sate this hunger are a trio of Alberto Giacometti sculptures from a private European collection: Buste de Diego (Aménophis), 1954 (est. £2-3 million; $3-4.4 million), a lifetime bronze of the artist’s brother; Annette VII (est. £1.2-1.8 million; $1.8-2.6 million), a three-quarters view of his muse and favorite model from 1962; and Tête de Diego (Colroulé), 1951-52 (est. £1-1.5 million; $1.5-2.2 million), a unique painted-plaster work.

Sotheby’s June 25th session will reveal if bidders are just as famished for contemporary works. "We’ve got a lot of good things with great provenance in the sale," says the house’s deputy director, Alex Branczik. "We’re returning to classic postwar art, things that have not necessarily seen the spikes in value that we’ve seen in the contemporary market."

One such postwar prize is Yves Klein’s ANT 59, 1960, from his "Anthropométrie" series. Famously formed by the imprint of a female body in the artist’s patented YKB shade of blue, the canvas is estimated to go for between £300,000 and £400,000 ($445-593,000). Another work from the series, ANT 131, 1961, more than quadrupled its high estimate to fetch some £4,185,200 ($8.4 million) at Sotheby’s London last July, just months before the market went south.

London crowds have also been hot for work by Lucio Fontana, whose Concetto Spaziale, 1961, was one of the only works to earn a multimillion-dollar price in the February sessions, when it brought £4.4 million ($6.4 million) at Sotheby’s. Now Christie’s is getting in on the Fontana fun: The highlight of its postwar and contemporary evening sale on June 30 will be a sliced abstraction in a blazing shade of fire-engine red, Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1966 (est. £600-900,000; $890,000-1.3 million). The house also offers a compact but beautiful 1961 work scrawled in oil, lead pencil and wax crayon by Cy Twombly (est. £500-700,000; $741,000-1 million). Rich in the artist’s distinctive graffito, the 15¾-by-19¾-inch untitled piece comes from a collector who acquired it from Cologne’s premier gallerist and Twombly specialist, Karsten Greve, around 1990. "It’s small," concedes Christie’s Outred, "but it’s the best I’ve ever seen in that size and scale."

As for Phillips de Pury & Company’s July 2 evening sale, Michael McGinnis, the worldwide head of contemporary art at the firm, assured Art+Auction that "there are some exciting things in the pipeline;" but as the issue went to print the only major lot he could reveal was Kehinde Wiley’s faux-Renaissance figure painting, Passing/Posing (St. Helena), 2004 , which carries an estimate of £25,000 to £35,000 ($37-52,000).

A few days later, Christie’s rolls back the centuries, offering its Old Masters and 19th-century European art sale. The July 7 session features a connoisseur’s mix of periods and mediums; highlights range from a jumbo-sized 40-by-65-inch Pieter Brueghel, The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (est. £1-1.5 million; $1.5-2.2 million), to an Anthony Van Dyck portrait of the full-figured and sumptuously attired Mrs. Olivier St. John, later Lady Poulett (est. £800,000-1.2 million; $1.2-1.8 million). Christie’s is going out on a limb with its appraisal of the work, describing it as the finest Van Dyck to appear at auction in a generation. There’s also a striking 1874 page-sized drawing by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, which depicts Joseph Marcotte, the son of the artist’s friend and patron, Charles (est. £250-350,000; $371-519,000). Christie’s is no doubt hoping for a performance akin to the one another Ingres drawing pulled off at the Yves Saint Laurent-Pierre Berge mega-sale when it made €913,000 ($1.2 million).

Sotheby’s completes the London summer season with its Old Masters sale on July 8 that features work from the trove of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, of pharmaceutical company fame. Offerings include the exceptional 17th-century painting depicting the mythic struggles of Prometheus by Jusepe de Ribera (est. £800,000-1.2 million; $1.2-1.8 million). In this age of turbo-charged markets turned to dust, a terrifying portrait of the first man to play with fire and get burned seems an appropriate finale.

"London Sales Preview" originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2009 Table of Contents.