The top prices at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s Impressionist & Modern art sales were for a pastel and a watercolor. Such was the frenzy about the $120 million sale of ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch that the rest of the artworks, including some genuine nuggets, sold in New York a week ago, drew relatively little attention.
The whole series at Sotheby’s and Christie’s garnered $526 million, among the top six or seven sales that have ever been held in that category. For Sotheby’s that sold the Munch, it reached the second highest total. On the other hand, Christie’s had a smaller opening sale. If we take out ‘The Scream’ sales from the final figures, average prices the Christie’s sale fetched, were higher than that at Sotheby’s. The sale was led by a Cézanne watercolor sketch of one intriguing figure in ‘The Card Players’, one of his most celebrated paintings series.
A colorful, if rather jumbled, Matisse’s still life of peonies – for which $4 million had been paid at the peak of the 1989/90 boom – went for $19 million. A better return was there for a smaller, succulent Picasso painting of the head of Marie-Thérèse Walter, his young lover. Bought a decade ago for $3 million, it went for $9.9 million. It was one of over 30 Picassos available at the sales that brought a cumulative $88 million, maintaining his pole position in this shaky market.
The top Picasso of the sales ended up playing second fiddle to ‘The Scream’ at Sotheby’s. The portrait of Dora Maar seated in a cozy armchair belonged to Theodore “Teddy” Forstmann, the late billionaire businessman. Despite a small tear that had been restored, it went within estimate - for $29 million. Forstmann, a fierce competitor at auction according to Sotheby’s, occasionally seems to have overpaid.
Following a record-breaking period for Surrealism, it was a major feature of the sales once again. ‘Printemps Nécrophilique’ by Salvador Dalí, once owned by eminent early-20th-century couturière Elsa Schiaperelli, is currently the theme of an exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. It sold above original estimate for $16.3 million, incidentally the second highest price ever for a work by Dalí.
This is a market where patient art collectors can expect to earn reasonable returns.
The whole series at Sotheby’s and Christie’s garnered $526 million, among the top six or seven sales that have ever been held in that category. For Sotheby’s that sold the Munch, it reached the second highest total. On the other hand, Christie’s had a smaller opening sale. If we take out ‘The Scream’ sales from the final figures, average prices the Christie’s sale fetched, were higher than that at Sotheby’s. The sale was led by a Cézanne watercolor sketch of one intriguing figure in ‘The Card Players’, one of his most celebrated paintings series.
A colorful, if rather jumbled, Matisse’s still life of peonies – for which $4 million had been paid at the peak of the 1989/90 boom – went for $19 million. A better return was there for a smaller, succulent Picasso painting of the head of Marie-Thérèse Walter, his young lover. Bought a decade ago for $3 million, it went for $9.9 million. It was one of over 30 Picassos available at the sales that brought a cumulative $88 million, maintaining his pole position in this shaky market.
The top Picasso of the sales ended up playing second fiddle to ‘The Scream’ at Sotheby’s. The portrait of Dora Maar seated in a cozy armchair belonged to Theodore “Teddy” Forstmann, the late billionaire businessman. Despite a small tear that had been restored, it went within estimate - for $29 million. Forstmann, a fierce competitor at auction according to Sotheby’s, occasionally seems to have overpaid.
Following a record-breaking period for Surrealism, it was a major feature of the sales once again. ‘Printemps Nécrophilique’ by Salvador Dalí, once owned by eminent early-20th-century couturière Elsa Schiaperelli, is currently the theme of an exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. It sold above original estimate for $16.3 million, incidentally the second highest price ever for a work by Dalí.
This is a market where patient art collectors can expect to earn reasonable returns.
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