Though lacking firepower on par with the blockbuster Picasso its arch-rival Sotheby's had on Tuesday evening, Christie's knocked down a marathon evening sale in London that tag-teamed Impressionist and Modern Art with the "Art of the Surreal" to bring in a market-assuring $136,316,959 (£84,879,800). That tally overshot the £72.5 million low presale estimate, but fell shy of the £107.1 million high estimate.

Sixty of the 76 lots sold, for a decent buy-in rate of 21 percent by lot and 16 percent by value. Two artist records were set, three lots sold for over five million pounds, and 23 made over one million pounds. For Americas keeping score, 34 lots sold for over a million dollars.

Even Christie's senior-level experts were surprised by the snazzy outcome, having anticipated a patchy evening with potential for more casualties. "It went better than I expected," said a relieved Thomas Seydoux, head of Christie's Impressionist and Modern European division, just moments after the two-hour sale. "I thought it was going to be more measured."

The evening was helped by a global spread of bidders, with buyers hailing from 20 different countries. Twenty-three percent of the lots went to the United Kingdom, 49 percent to Europe (including Russia), 23 percent to the United States, and five percent to Asia.

Remarkably, or so it seemed, a Chinese buyer bidding via telephone nabbed Giorgio Morandi's austere and fresh-to-market 1953 still life "Natura Morta" for $2.2 million (£1.4 million) against an estimate of £700,000-1 million. Before the recent sea change of buying patterns, Morandi would have been expected to appeal to European or American taste.

There appeared to be no end to Russian bidding, as one otherwise anonymous phone bidder — deliberating at agonizingly slow measures via Christie's Zürich-based Russian art specialist Sandra Nedvetskaia — went on a shopping spree, nabbing Pierre Bonnard's large-scale and color-fused "Terrasse a Vernon" (1923) for a record and top-lot $11,578,056 (£7,209,250) on a £3-4 million estimate. It had been in the same private collection since 1935.

Meanwhile, a mystery client (believed to be from the Ukraine region) who was on the phone with Sedoux also
bought Picasso's 1901 "Sur
l'Imperiale Traversant la Seine," an early oil-on-cardboard Parisian city scene of figures riding atop an open-decked omnibus (est. £2-3 million), for $7.8 million (£4.9 million), as well as Andre Derain's
Fauve-period 1905 landscape "Bateaux a Collioure" for $9.4 million (£5,865,250) on an estimate of £4-6 million. 

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Not everyone was thrilled by the dominance of the anonymous telephone pair. As the bidding crawled along in a slow-motion ping-pong match between the two, one impatient and prominent London art dealer who was seated in the room passed along a note to this writer complaining about the snail's pace, noting the auctioneer "had no authority and no control of the room."

Even so, Nedvetskaia's bidder (paddle #841) contributed mightily to the evening, also buying Kees van Dongen's cloyingly theatrical "L'Actrice Lili Damita" (circa 1926) for a whopping $4.9 million (£3.1 million) on a £1.5-2 million estimate. The mystery buyer also chased other major works, underbidding the large and über-decorative Natalia Goncharova "Les Arbres en Fleurs (Pommiers en Fleurs)" from 1912, which sold to Seydoux's bidder for $6.4 million (£4 million) against a presale bracket of £2.5-3.5 million. Collector Samir Traboulsi, of Paris and London, was another in the deep-pocketed cast of underbidders. (The underbidder on the Derain was London dealer Alan Hobart of Pyms Gallery.)

Several of the sale's top performers — including the 1901 Picasso Seine scene — came to London courtesy a four-lot trove deacessioned by the Art Institute of Chicago, which all together realized $16 million (£10 million). Of that museum-provenanced crew, George Braque's big, sand-dappled 1938 composition "Nature Morte a la Guitare (Rideaux Rouge)" sold to another telephone bidder for $6.4 million (£3,961,250) on a £3.5-5.5 million estimate.

Another highlight bearing an impeccable provenance was the late and rather stumpy Edgar Degas pastel-and-charcoal-on-joined-paper "Danseuses Jupes Jaunes (Deux Danseuses en Jaune)" from circa 1905 — a painting in which neither ballerina looking anything like Natalie Portman
— sold to another telephone bidder for $8.7 million (£5.4 million) against an estimate of £3-5 million. New York dealer William Acquavella was the underbidder.

The only major casualty of the evening was Paul Gauguin's bad-luck  homage to his departed friend Vincent van Gogh, titled "Nature Morte a 'L'Esperance,'" which tanked at £5.8 million (est. £7-10 million).

While the Impressionist and Modern section took the lion's share of the tally — $100 million (£62 million), all in all — the smaller Surrealist section was red hot, realizing $37 million (£23 million).

The cover lot of that once revolutionary group, René Magritte's sexy and generously scaled "L'Aimant" (1941) led the charge, selling to Nedvetskaia's voracious bidder for $7.6 million (£4.7 million) on a £3.5-5.5 million estimate. It last sold at auction at Sotheby's New York in May 1981 for $170,000.

Not far behind was the finest Salvador Dalí to hit the market in some time, a sensational beach scene featuring the severed head of the great Spanish poet Federico Lorca and other mayhem. The Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí bought it for an artist-record $6.5 million (£4 million) against a £2-3 million estimate.

Buyers seemed enamored of world-class provenance, as a ghostly, figurative sculpture by Max Ernst, "Les Asperges de la Lune," conceived in 1935 and cast and painted in 1973 (just three years before the artist's death), made $2.1 million (£1.3 million) on an estimate of £250-350,000. It came from an edition of six, of which two are painted. The other one resides at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Private London-based collector Catherine Lagrange, standing at the back of the salesroom, beat a determined underbidder seated directly in front of her. Striding out of the salesroom, she declined to comment on her purchase.

The evening action returns to Sotheby's Thursday evening with a single-owner sale from the estate of a storied and secretive European collector. It has London buzzing in anticipation.