Auction Review: Impressionist & Modern Art

Christie’s

48 lots offered
$102,767,000 sold total
6 percent unsold by value
21 percent unsold by lot

Sotheby’s

36 lots offered
$61,370,500 sold total
41.2 percent unsold by value
19.4 percent unsold by lot

July/August 2009 Auction Reviews

Contemporary Art

American Paintings

Bonhams

Lempertz

Nagel

Camard

Christie's

Bukowskis

Sotheby's

Dorotheum

Sloans & Kenyon

Eldred's

Skinner

Tamara de Lempicka Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Henry Moore Claude Monet Piet Mondrian Illustrator José Cisneros Has Died Dasha, Gaga, and Gago Party for MOCA

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The season-opening session, at Sotheby’s on May 5, generated surprisingly good results. Although two high-profile lots flopped, the day’s take of $61,370,500 helped soften the blow the house suffered to its corporate credit rating, which was downgraded to junk-bond level.

The strength of the sale, according to the London dealer James Roundell, "was very much in the Impressionist area." These lots generally exceeded expectations, especially the ones from the collection of the "Sugar King" H. O. Havemeyer. Claude Monet’s serene Voilier sur le petit bras de la Seine, Argenteuil, 1872 (est. $1.2-1.8 million), which had been on extended loan at the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, since 1994, was snagged for a hefty $3,498,500 by the megadealer David Nahmad, underbid by Roundell; and Camille Pissarro’s lovely plein-air Inondation à Pontoise, 1882 (est. $900-1.2 million), which the Havemeyers acquired in 1901 from the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, went for $2,994,500 to a telephone bidder.

The modern category proved to be a more treacherous territory for the house, which misjudged the market power of the session’s two most-trumpeted offerings: Picasso’s La fille de l’artiste à deux ans et demi avec un bateau, 1938, and Alberto Giacometti’s rare-to-market 1959 bronze Le chat. Both works were estimated to go for between $16 million and $24 million but failed to find buyers, tanking at $12.25 million and $14.75 million, respectively.

Several dealers criticized Sotheby’s for its overreaching estimates on these two lots — which were primarily responsible for the session’s uneven sell-through rates of 80.6 percent by lot and just 58.8 percent by value — citing the Giacometti bronze in particular. "There was nothing wrong with the piece," says the seasoned London dealer Thomas Gibson. "It was just too expensive. It should have been $8 million to $12 million."

The house had better luck with a few modern masterpieces on which it erred on the conservative side. Piet Mondrian’s outstanding minimal beauty, Composition in Black and White, With Double Lines, 1934, soared past its estimate of $3 million to $5 million to fetch $9,266,500. And the quartet of Art Deco paintings by Tamara de Lempicka consigned by the fashion heavyweight Wolfgang Joop fetched a combined $13.8 million. Lempicka’s sultry Portrait de Marjorie Ferry, 1932 (est. $4-6 million), brought $4,898,500, a one-night-only auction record for the artist. One of the unsuccessful suitors for the portrait was the London private dealer Ivor Braka, bidding on behalf of the Connecticut-based hedge-fund manager George Weiss, who sat by his side. Apparently, Weiss has not lost his taste for auctions despite his pending suit against Christie’s over an alleged guarantee of $40 million for a Francis Bacon portrait that failed to sell last November. After missing out on Marjorie Ferry, Braka went for the artist’s Portrait de la duchesse de la Salle, 1925 (est. $4-6 million), bagging it for $4,450,500.

Lempicka continued to wow the crowd the following night at the Christie’s sale, where her Portrait de Madame M., 1932 (est. $6-8 million), broke her just-established record by fetching $6,130,500. That was one of many triumphs recorded by the sale, which took in $102,767,000 on 38 lots, 24 of which fetched more than $1 million each.

Nineteenth-century works also continued to perform well. Pissarro’s apple picking scene, La cueillette des pommes, 1881 (est. $1.4-1.8 million), sold over the phone for $3,330,500, with the New York art adviser Mary Hoeveler underbidding; and Paul Gauguin’s Nature morte aux tomates, 1883 (est. $1.75-2.25 million), brought $2,882,500 from Roundell.

In the modern category, Christie’s fared far better than its rival, managing to unload almost all its most expensive lots. The sole exception was Max Ernst’s strangely Oedipal 1928 oil Malédiction à vous les mamans, depicting half-bird, half-human figures floating against a blue background. Clearly suffering from stage fright over its unrealistically high estimate of $7 million to $9 million, the consignor withdrew the picture before the sale.

Picasso’s Mousquetaire à la pipe, 1968 (est. $12-18 million), snagged the week’s top price, $14,642,500. "I bought the painting for a European client who has a big collection but not a Mousquetaire," says the Brussels dealer Mimo Vedovi. The picture had last sold for $7,175,500 in 2004 at Christie’s to the collector Jerome Fisher — reportedly a victim of Bernard Madoff — who consigned it this spring in return for a third-party financial guarantee. A larger and later Picasso, Femme au chapeau, 1971, consigned by the filmmaker and artist Julian Schnabel, was bought by Nahmad for $7,754,500, just under its low estimate of $8 million. Before the bidding began, auctioneer Christopher Burge caused a bit of a buzz in the salesroom by announcing that the frame in which the picture had previewed was not part of the sale, leading some to speculate that Schnabel wanted to recycle it on one of his own paintings.

Christie’s also did well with lots of sculpture, such as Alberto Giacometti’s Buste de Diego (Stele iii), a stately bronze cast from a 1957-58 plaster (est. $4.5-6.5 million), which a telephone bidder won for $7,698,500 in a fierce competition with Gagosian Gallery’s Victoria Gelfand and the Swiss dealer Beda Jedlicka, among others. Another telephone bidder outlasted two competitors to nab Henry Moore’s mythic bronze Falling Warrior, 1956-57 (est. $2.5-3.5 million), for $3,554,500.

"It went like a summer’s day," Burge says of the evening. "If you can get the right material, you can get the best results at auction.

"Auction Reviews: Impressionist & Modern Art" originally appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July/August 2009 Table of Contents.