A view of the packed saleroom.
Amadeo Modigliani’s Nu Couche (Sur le cote gauche) sold for $157.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York last night. This is the highest price in Sotheby’s auction history and nearly six times the price paid for the same painting when it was sold by casino mogul Steve Wynn in 2003. The seller this time round is believed to be the Irish horse trainer John Magnier of Coolmore Stud. Modigliani now belongs to a rarefied league of only three artists to break the US$150 million barrier at auction, along with Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.
A quarter of all sold works at the Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale were acquired by Asian private collectors. Those works were led by Pablo Picasso’s dreamy 1932 portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Le Repos, which made $36.9 million. A portion of the proceeds from the work will go to charity through The Sue J. Gross Foundation. The painting last sold at auction in 2000 for $7.9 million. The evening sale achieved $318.3 million.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for April 24, 2018)