Results were not disastrous since the premium-inclusive $346.7m (£242.7m) turned over by the three main houses at their Part I evening sales was some $58m (£40.6m) up on last May. Nevertheless auctioneers had to work hard and there were some high-profile failures – most notably Van Gogh’s Le Jardin d’Automne ($30m-40m) at Phillips and Picasso’s 1923 portrait of his wife Olga ($30m) at Christie’s. Phillips and Sotheby’s evening sales registered hefty unsold rates of 37 and 45 per cent by lot.
For the first time Phillips de Pury Luxembourg took centre stage in their new saleroom at 3 West 57 Street, which had been refurbished in record time for their May 7 sale of seven works from the Heinz Berggruen collection and other Impressionist and Modern art.
Around 300 people packed into the saleroom to see the Berggruen collection, widely rumoured to have been guaranteed by Phillips’ owner Bernard Arnault for $120m, generate a premium-inclusive $71m (£49.7m) with a top price of $35m (£24.5m) bid for Cézanne’s Le Montagne Sainte-Victoire, but no interest in the $30-40m Van Gogh. Although the total $124m (£86.8m) from 41 lots (of which 15 were left unsold) was some $46m (£32.2m) shy of the lower estimate, auctioneer Simon de Pury described the result as “very encouraging for an auction house that is steadily solidifying its presence in the top echelon of the industry.” The final total was almost three times that achieved for any previous Phillips sale.
The only burst of bidding in depth at these New York sales occurred at Sotheby’s the following evening when a separately-catalogued selection of 62 works from the collection of Stanley Seeger was offered.
This proved to be a virtual sell-out with a record $7.8m (£5.5m) paid for Francis Bacon’s 1979 triptych, Studies for the Human Body and $5.1m (£3.6m) for a Miró Nocturne, while in the more selectively received various-owners section of Sotheby’s sale a massive new high was achieved for Max Beckmann – and for any German work of art – when Ronald Lauder’s Neue Galerie museum paid a double estimate $20.5 (£14.35m) for the powerful 1938 Self-Portrait with Horn. Sotheby’s evening sale totalled $139.3m (£97.5m) of which the Seeger Collection contributed $54m (£37.7m).
In terms of content, Christie’s May 9 Impressionist and Modern sale was the least impressive of the week’s three Part I offerings, despite the ballast of Picasso’s portrait of Olga Koklova.
With a massive estimate of $30m, few people expected this sombre classical-period painting to sell and Christie’s leading lights were instead a Monet 1916-1919 Nympheas at $9m (£6.3m) and the 1925 Matisse pastel, La Danseuse, at $4.8m (£3.4m), a record for a drawing by the artist. Though Christie’s Impressionist and Modern total of $83.4m (£58.4m) was $20m down on last May, star auctioneer Christopher Burge did manage to find buyers for 39 (87%) of his 45 lots.
On May 11 eyes will turn to the Armory’s International Fine Art Fair for further evidence of which way the market was going to turn. Early reports suggested that few major sales had been made at the beginning of the fair.
Hard going in NY as Phillips join race
USA: Fears that the recent slowdown in the US economy would drastically affect the top end of the art market were to some extent realised at New York’s Impressionist and Modern sales last week.
