Source: Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com by Scott Reyburn
Picasso Sells for $11.3 Million in London as Market Nerves Ease
A Picasso painting of his mistress Dora Maar fetched 5.7 million pounds ($11.3 million) at a Christie's International auction last night in London as dealers said demand held up in the year's first test of the impressionist and modern art market.
The 1938 head-and-shoulders study, ``Femme a Chapeau,'' had been expected to sell for 2.5 million to 3.5 million pounds. The 2-foot-high painting was one of 131 lots in the impressionist and modern sale, the first of a series of auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's that's estimated to bring in a record 429 million pounds in February. The Picasso had failed to sell in 2002.
Christie's three-hour sale raised 105.4 million pounds including commissions, the second-highest total for an auction in Europe, compared with a presale estimate of 89 million pounds to 126 million pounds before fees. The auction house said 76 percent of the lots were sold.
``The market's fine,'' said New York dealer Nick Maclean of Eykyn Maclean. ``The total was huge, and there was a lot to sell.''
Christie's similarly sized sale a year ago totaled 89.7 million pounds, in the middle of the estimated range, with 80 percent of the lots finding buyers.
According to the auction tracker Artnet, ``Femme a Chapeau'' had failed to sell at Sotheby's New York in November 2002 when it carried an estimate of $4 million to $6 million. Christie's said it had been offered by a Swiss company and sold to a European buyer in the room.
Two lots later, the 5-foot-high Picasso canvas ``Homme Assis au Fusil'' (Man Seated With Rifle), dating from 1969, sold to a telephone bidder for 5.6 million pounds, near the lower end of its estimated range.
Neue Galerie Sells
A group of eight drawings by the Austrian expressionist artist Egon Schiele sold for 12.5 million pounds with fees, compared with an estimate of 7.6 million pounds to 10.8 million pounds. The drawings were being offered by the Neue Galerie in New York to help pay for Gustav Klimt's ``Adele Bloch-Bauer I,'' the museum said in a statement on Jan. 4. The cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder acquired the Klimt privately for the museum he founded for the record price of $135 million in June 2006.
Most expensive of the drawings was a 1910 gouache, ``Mutter und Kind (Mother and Child),'' estimated at 1.5 million to 2 million pounds. This was bought for inventory by the London dealer Richard Nagy for 2.9 million pounds.
``This was the best nude in Neue Galerie's entire oeuvre of Schiele drawings,'' Nagy said after the sale. ``It wasn't expensive. I would have been prepared to pay 50 percent more.''
The other main single-owner consignment was a group of nine works by Kees van Dongen, Alexej von Jawlensky and other early 20th-century masters bought by the late Maurice Wohl, a U.K. office developer, during the late 1960s.
Van Dongen Record
Six of the nine sold, led by the record 5.6 million pounds paid by a Swiss telephone bidder for the 1910 Van Dongen oil of an exotic dancer, ``L'Ouled Nail,'' inspired by the artist's travels to North Africa. The 3-foot-high canvas had been estimated at 2 million pounds to 3 million pounds. The Wohl pictures took in a total of 11.7 million pounds with fees, compared with a presale forecast of 8.3 million pounds to 12.2 million pounds.
``Demand was quite a lot better than it could have been,'' London dealer James Roundell said. ``There was quite a lot of Russian bidding. Overestimating did get punished, and they do need to prune these sales.''
Christie's said 83 percent of the lots were bought by European buyers, including Russians. Fifteen percent were bought by buyers in the Americas, with 2 percent going to Asian bidders.
(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
