The £74m achieved at Christie's on June 20 from a mammoth 101 lots - over half of which were 'guaranteed' - was the highest ever total for a sale in this category in Europe, just pipping the £72.4m turned over at Sotheby's the following evening from a more tightly edited selection of 72 lots. After Sotheby's sale a euphoric auctioneer Tobias Meyer pointed out that for the first time a London contemporary auction had averaged more than £1m per lot. Both houses found buyers for around 90 per cent of their material.
Applause broke out in the packed salerooms on several occasions as works by the market's most sought-after names fetched unprecedented prices.
Lucian Freud's 1992 portrait of Bruce Bernard became the most expensive painting by a living European artist when it sold to a telephone buyer at Christie's for £7m.
Twenty-four hours later the record for any living artist was smashed at Sotheby's by the double-estimate £8.6m paid for Damien Hirst's monumental 2002 polychrome pill cabinet piece, Lullaby Spring.
Another work from this series emblematic of the seasons, Lullaby Winter (with white rather than coloured pills), had established the previous high for Hirst when it sold for $6.6m (£3.3m) at Christie's New York in May.
Top price of the week was the £19.25m paid by an American collector at Sotheby's for Francis Bacon's 1978 Self Portrait. This was the second highest price ever paid for the artist.
Sotheby's also achieved a new record for any Chinese contemporary work when Yue Minjun's 1997 Pope sold to an Asian telephone bidder for £1.9m.
Earlier in the week Christie's enjoyed a clear edge over Sotheby's at the evening the Impressionist and Modern sales, though again King Street offered substantially more lots.
The £121.1m taken at Christie's June 18 Part I sale was the highest total ever achieved at an auction in Europe. Christie's packed their 72-lot sale with the sort of decorative Impressionist pictures that appeal to Russian oligarchs.
Around a third of the lots were bought (and another third underbid) on the telephone by just two paddle numbers, predictably prompting speculation that prices had been supported by Christie's Russian client base.
King Street's star lot proved to be Claude Monet's 1904, Waterloo Bridge, temps couvert, which sold to an American collector for a double high estimate £16m against determined competition from Asia.
Monet - who at present seems to be Impressionism's most enduringly commercial brand name - also generated the top price at Sotheby's more muted £80.4m sale of just 45 lots the following evening.
An as yet unidentified Asian bidder in the room fought off more conspicuous underbidding from billionaire Top Shop boss Philip Green to secure a market-fresh 1904 Nymphéas painting for £16.5m against an estimate of £10-15m.
Sotheby's total, unlike Christie's, fell within estimate, but Bond Street did achieve new records for Rodin and Matisse. Rodin's rare lifetime cast of Iris, Messagère des Dieux soared to a septuple estimate £4.1m, while Matisse's 1942 Danseuse dans le Fauteuil, Sol en Damier more than doubled its 2000 auction price by taking £9.8m.
Selling rates at both Part I Imps & Mods were over 80 per cent, but these rates dropped to 60-70 per cent in the Part II sales. Both in evening and during the day the Impressionism and Modern market attracted a noticeably thinner client base than contemporary.
By Scott Reyburn
