Sotheby’s sold £18.1m across two sales – a picture sale on November 26 that raised £14.5m, the firm’s highest total for a sale in this category in five years, and a £3.6m works of art, Fabergé and icons auction.
The series was led by a rare painting from the early 1920s by avant-garde artist Ivan Kliun (1873-1943). Spherical Suprematism overshot a £3.5m top estimate and was knocked down at a record £4.1m.
The top work of art was a silver-gilt cloisonné and pictorial triptych icon by Moscow goldsmith Khlebnikov c.1900 which sold for £450,000, while the strongest competition of the series came at the same sale for a Soviet porcelain part tea set estimated at £7000- 9000 which took £100,000.
Meanwhile, Christie’s Russian sale on November 25 generated £11.9m and was led by The Manicure, a Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955) portrait of Mademoiselle Girmond which sold under hopes at £1.9m.
Specialist auction house MacDougall’s raised a combined £4.1m from two sales on November 25 and November 27. The top lot was a Spanish-themed figurative work by Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) L’Espaniole, that was knocked down at £750,000 (estimate £800,000-1.2m).
Bonhams’ £1.2m Russian sale was also led by a Goncharova – Birch Trees from 1906 that sold comfortably above hopes for £200,000.
