Sotheby’s and Christie’s turned over a combined premium-inclusive total of £101.7m for their Part I evening sales, some £16m up on the equivalent events last year.
Selling rates also held firm, never dipping below 70 per cent at any of the main two houses’ Part I outings. Demand was, however, more patchy at de Pury & Luxembourg’s inaugural Impressionist and Modern art sale in London (total £11.9m) on June 24 at Claridge’s where Max Beckmann’s 1935 oil Five Women was knocked down well below estimate for £4.1m.
Star of the week was undoubtedly Picasso’s 1932 canvas of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Nu au collier, which sold at Christie’s on June 25 to the London private dealer Libby Howie for £14.5m, making it the most expensive work of art sold at auction in the world this year.
The previous evening Sotheby’s had achieved another significant eight-figure price in their Impressionist and Modern sale when a private bidder in the room gave £12.25m for Monet’s 1906 Nymphéas.
Recent losses on the world’s stock market also failed to deter buyers of contemporary art, though there was a noticeable cooling in the market for photography and younger British artists. Sotheby’s total of £11.8m for their June 26 evening sale was their highest since 1990 – helped by the £1.8m paid by Dickinson-Roundell for Gerhard Richter’s Study for Clouds, Green-Blue, while Christie’s £8.7m combined Post-War and Contemporary sale the following evening, albeit lacking major-name masterworks, nonetheless improved on the £6.8m achieved by the two categories last June.
“It could have gone a lot worse,” observed one leading London dealer.
Market upbeat about pictures
Concerns that turmoil in the world’s stock markets would spill over into London’s June round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales proved to be largely unfounded.
