Despite a raucous line of protesters blowing whistles and shouting outside of Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters this evening in sympathy with 42 locked-out Teamster Union art handlers, and two more activists inside the lobby yelling “shame on the 1 percent” and “we are the 99 percent,” the house was unimpeded in pulling off a convincingly strong Impressionist and Modern sale. In sharp contrast to the anemic evening at arch-rival Christie’s on Tuesday, Sotheby’s tallied $199,804,500 against pre-sale expectations of $167.5-229.8 million.

Thirteen of the 70 lots offered failed to sell, for a decent buy-in rate by lot of 19 percent and 13 percent by value. Two artist records were set, and six lots made over $5 million. Thirty-nine of the 57 that sold made over one million dollars.

The sale trailed the $227.5 million result of November 2010, which had a 25 percent buy-in rate by lot, but exceeded last May’s $170.4 million tally, which had an identical 25 percent buy-in rate by lot.

The 24-hour gap between the sales enabled Sotheby’s to warn consignors to drop their reserves, that minimum and confidential price set prior to sale and usually somewhat shy of the low estimate. Sotheby’s scare tactics worked like a charm and erased what looked like a dramatic market downturn.

The evening got off to a strong start with Edgar Degas’s 12 ⅜-inch-high bronze “Cheval se Cabrant” from a posthumous cast selling to New York private dealer Guy Bennett for $2,210,500 (est. $800,000-1.2 million). Salvador Dali’s “Le Voyage Fantastique,” a 40-by-60-inch gouache-on-paper from 1965 resembling a Sigmar Polke more than a Dali, sold to New York trader Jose Mugrabi for $1,930,500. Midway through the bidding, auctioneer Tobias Meyer reminded Mugrabi, “you’re going on a fantastic trip.”

It felt that way, as if the shock and gloomy awe of the previous evening’s casualty-rich affair dissipate as the restituted cover lot, Gustav Klimt’s beautiful summer landscape “Litzlberg Am Attersee” from circa 1914-15, sold to Zürich dealer David Lachenmann for $40,402,500 (the unpublished estimate was in the region of $25 million and above). Battling against a stubborn phone bidder, the contest went on and on at $1 million and then $500,000 increments, creating a slow cat-and-mouse game. 

Though Lachenmann declined to say anything about his client, he praised the tapestry-like patterned painting, calling it “a masterpiece in perfect condition and still in its original Josef Hoffman frame.” He also revealed that his client had approached the lawyer representing the owner, an heir of the Viennese collector Amalie Redlich, this past summer with a higher offer, only to have it rejected. “We’re quite happy to get it at this price,” he said.

After the Klimt was seized by the Gestapo after the Anschluss in 1938, it hung undisturbed for decades at the Museum der Moderne Rupertinum in Salzburg. The museum finally returned the painting to its rightful owner and, as part of that negotiation, will receive a portion of the sale proceeds to build an extension to the museum that will be named in Redlich’s memory. She perished in a Nazi concentration camp.

Other supercharged offerings included a late and libidinous Pablo Picasso “L’Aubade,” a 1967 painting featuring the flute-playing artist and a reclining female nude that sold to a telephone bidder for $23,042,500 (est. $18-25 million). Dealer David Nahmad was the underbidder. The seller acquired the work at Sotheby’s London in April 1979 for under $100,000, according to the auction house.

There were other interesting comparisons to make in terms of how the art market is treating fresh-to-market and not-so-fresh-to-market works.

Gustave Caillebotte’s stunning circa 1883 Impressionist picture “Le Pont d’Argenteuil et la Seine,” which had been on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for a record $18,002,500 (est. $9-12 million). It last sold at auction in November 2008 for $8,482,500, a price the owner and Sotheby’s bet could be improved upon despite the market downturn.

And, perhaps more remarkably, the underbidder for the Caillebotte, a gentleman seated towards the back of the salesroom and wielding paddle number 1173, was on a shopping spree.

He and his companion bought the luscious and sun-speckled Claude Monet “Antibes, Le Fort” from 1888, one of seven works deaccessioned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to benefit the collection, for $9,266,500 (est. $5-7 million), He also lassoed another MFA Boston entry, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Portrait en buste de jeune fille” from circa 1893, for $1,874,500 (est. $1.8-2.5 million), Edvard Munch’s seaside “Morgen på Promenade des Anglais” (“Morning on the Promendade des Anglais”) from 1891 for $1,986,500 (est. $2-3 million), and Wassily Kandinsky’s color-charged 1908 Expressionist composition “Weisser Klang (White Sound)” for $8,930,500 (est. $7-10 million).

The Kandinsky last sold at Sotheby’s New York in May, 2007, arguably at the height of the past art boom, for $5,416,000.

As the duo exited the salesroom, an attempt to buttonhole them for a comment was greeted with stony silence.

The evening could have been frothier and possibly more revealing if the star sculpture lot, Henri Matisse’s bravura 74-inch-high bronze “Nu de dos (1er etat)” from a 1959 cast (est. $20-30 million), hadn’t been withdrawn. It was part of a group of four Matisse backs owned by the Burnett Foundation from Fort Worth, and had been initially consigned to Sotheby’s as a cohesive group for private sale. That plan sputtered, and it was decided to offer one “Dos” at a time in successive evening sales in New York and London.

But yesterday, an anonymous private buyer came through and made an acceptable offer. Sotheby’s declined to give any information about the buyer or the price, though trade gossip pegged the transaction in the $120 million range.

It would be difficult to describe the evening as a connoisseur’s fantasy, though some huge prices were achieved, including Tamara de Lempicka’s decidedly bling and decorative big-shouldered nude “Le reve (Rafaela sur fond vert)” from 1937 that sold to a telephone bidder for a record $8,482,500 (est. $5-7 million). A number of seasoned observers were at a loss for explaining the difference between the two evening auctions.

“I have no idea,” said Guy Bennett, the buyer of the Degas bronze, as he exited the salesroom.

“I don’t think the material tonight was substantially different,” said London dealer James Roundell. “They had 24 hours to work on bringing down the reserves and were able to sell works below their estimates. At the end of the day, every picture is salable at a price.”

But Dominique Levy, a partner in the New York and Los Angeles dealership L&M Arts who bought Pablo Picasso’s black-crayon-on-paper “Homme au turban et nu couché” from 1969 for $1,202,500 (est. $800,000-1.2 million), cited the “provenance of the works offered, better estimates, and better quality” to explain the stark difference between Wednesday evening and the Christie’s sale. Sotheby’s works, she said, “were so fresh to the market, especially the museum deaccessions. There’s a prestige involved in buying work from a museum. The atmosphere was very different tonight.”

The fall auction season moves to the contemporary arena on Monday evening at Philips de Pury and Company.