Sotheby's Imp/Mod Sale Small but Solid

Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Henri Matisse Wassily Kandinsky Rene Magritte Claude Monet Diego Giacometti Paul Signac

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More impressively, all but four of the 27 lots offered sold, for a confidence-building sold rate of 85 percent by lot and 91 percent by value. Eight lots sold for over a million pounds and 11 broke the million-dollar mark.

That said, the evening pales in comparison — unavoidably — to last June’s equivalent sale at Sotheby’s, when the 50 lots sold brought in £102,246,500 ($201,210,887).

Still, the auction got off to a rousing start with works on paper, including Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract Wachsen (Growth) (1923), in watercolor, pen, and ink on paper, which sold for £433,250 (est. £150–200,000), and a striking Henri Matisse charcoal on paper, Étude Pour “Le Chant,” which sold to a telephone bidder for £457,250 (est. £180–250,000).

Many of the evening’s offerings roused multiple bidders, and 61 percent of the lots that sold exceeded pre-sale estimates, at least once the buyer’s premium was added. Thirty-nine percent earned within their estimated ranges.

Among the most sought-after works, René Magritte’s La Lumière Des Coïncidences, a painting within a painting that features a burning candle and a nude torso on a painter’s easel, sold to a telephone bidder for an exciting £646,050 (est. £200–300,000). It last sold at auction at the same house in July 1998 for £150,000, meaning the buyer got a relatively handsome return.

In that same overachieving vein, Alberto Giacometti’s unique painted-plaster sculpture of his brother’s head, Diego (Tête au col roule) (1951–54) sold to another telephone bidder for £2,729,250 (est. £1–1.5 million). London dealer Thomas Gibson was one of the underbidders.

A Giacometti bronze, Buste D’Annette VII (1962), from a petite edition of 2, sold to New York art adviser Kim Heirston for £1,273,250 (est. £1.2–1.8 million).

“It was a great price,” said Heirston moments after the sale. “I was looking at a few Giacomettis in Basel, but they were posthumous casts. This one is a lifetime cast.”

“The art market lives,” she added, “but these sales, with just a few exceptions, were so weak.”

That perception conveyed auction houses’ current conundrum: Buyers might be ready to buy high-quality works again, but sellers are still hesitating to put them up.

Sculpture, even beyond Giacometti, fared well, with a carved Roman-stone composition of three forms by British modernist Barbara Hepworth going to London dealer Alan Hobart of Pyms Gallery for £780,450 (est. £700,000–1 million).

But the most expensive lot of the evening, and of the season thus far, was the sale’s cover lot, Pablo Picasso’s swashbuckling, sword-brandishing musketeer from July 1969, Homme à l’épée, which sold to London-based Lebanese financier Samir Traboulsi for £6,985,250 (est. £6–8 million). The painting beat out a Picasso, painted that same month, that Christie’s sold to the Nahmad dealing dynasty Tuesday evening for £5,753,250.

Homme à l’épée was the only lot of the evening’s sale that carried a so-called “irrevocable bid,” a kind of third-party guarantee that assured the painting would sell without Sotheby’s putting up the money, as was the modus operandi during the recent boom that ended in September. It was unclear whether Traboulsi himself was the backer, since he competed against an anonymous telephone bidder.

The painting was literally the poster image of the important and now historic late Picasso painting exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1970. As a little added bonus, Sotheby’s sourced a vintage poster of that exhibition for the buyer.

Another highlight in the bare-boned sale, which took less than an hour to dispatch, was Claude Monet’s brilliant winter scene Route de Giverny en Hiver (1885), which sold to a telephone bidder for £3,849,250 (est. £3–4 million). London art adviser Hector Patterson was one of the underbidders.

The picture was last offered at auction at Christie’s London in June 1998, where it went unsold against a pre-sale estimate of £1.8–2.5 million. It took only 11 years for it to be properly rehabilitated.

Another late Picasso also registered a strong price as Nu debout (1968), resembling in part the artist’s wife and muse, Jacqueline, attracted at least four bidders and sold to the telephone for £4,297,250 (est. £3–4 million).

On the post-Impressionist side of the ledger, Paul Signac’s pointillist water view Constantinople, La Corne d’or. La Suleimanie (1907), went to yet another telephone bidder for £1,385,250 (est. £1.2–1.8 million). It last sold at Christie’s New York in November 1998 for $563,500.

“What’s reassuring about tonight’s sale,” said Sotheby’s worldwide head of Impressionist and modern art, Melanie Clore, “is that there are people ready to stand up to the plate for the right works. That should give consignors confidence to consign in future auctions.”

The evening action resumes on Thursday with Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.