Apples and Pear by Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £171,450
The gem like Apples and Pear by Roderic O’Conor at Christie’s Modern British and Irish art evening sale in London on October 22 epitomises his use of colour, texture and strong stripes. The painting featured at the O’Conor retrospective at the National Gallery in 2018. It dates to around 1893 and Christie’s say that opportunities to acquire a work so emblematic of its period and of O’Conor’s oeuvre arise infrequently. The estimate is £120,000-£180,000 (€137,900-€206,890).
Peter Doig – Ski Jacket (1994) sold for €16,381,960
The highest total for a Frieze Week sale in London in seven years was achieved last night when Christie’s London evening sale made £106,925,400. Peter Doig’s Ski Jacket was the top lot of the evening making £16.3 million against an estimate of £6/8million and there was world records for Paula Rego, Suzanne Valadon, Annie Morris and Esben Weile Kjær. Peter Doig’s Country Rock made £9.2 million, Lucian Freud’s Self Portrait fragment made £7.6 million, Gerhard Richter’s Tulpen made £6.1 million and Cezanne’s Maison de Bellevue et pigeonnier made £5.5 million.
PAULA REGO (1935-2022) – Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s Fantasia made £3.4 million.
FRANZ WEST (1947-2012) – BLUE LUCK. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £285,750
Franz West began producing his beloved large-scale, brightly painted tubular and bulbous sculptures in the mid-1990s, initially in welded sheets of aluminium and later in fibreglass. Many of them include places to sit. Blue Luck, constructed of fibreglass, epoxy resin and lacquer, is lot 31 at Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on October 15 with an estimate of £300,000-£500,000. The sale offers revolutions in art making from Impressionism to Modernism with art by Paul Cezanne, Paul Signac, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, Paul Rego, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili and Jean Michel Basquiat among the 61 lots on offer.
A MAGNIFICENT AND HIGHLY IMPORTANT IMPERIAL WINTER EGG BY FABERGÉ. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £22,895,000 (€26,008,720)
Commissioned by Emperor Nicholas II as an Easter gift to his mother Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna the Winter Egg will be offered by Christie’s in London on December 2 during Classic Week with an estimate of in excess of £20 million. The Easter gift to his mother was in 1913, the year of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty. The creative genius of Fabergé’s most celebrated female designer Alma Theresia Pihl – exquisitely executed by her uncle workmaster Albert Holmström – it is among the most lavish of Fabergé’s Imperial creations and widely regarded as one of the most original and artistically inventive Easter eggs that the house created for the Imperial family. Believed lost for almost two decades, between 1975 and 1994, The Winter Egg has previously set the world record for a work by Fabergé not once but twice: when it was offered by Christie’s in 1994, upon being rediscovered, and again in 2002.
The egg is finely carved in rock crystal, delicately engraved on the interior with a frost design, while the exterior is applied with rose-cut diamond-set platinum snowflake motifs, with two vertical diamond-set platinum borders concealing a hinge on the side and a cabochon moonstone dated 1913. The egg is on a rock-crystal base formed as a block of melting ice, applied with rose-cut diamond-set platinum rivulets, centering a platinum pin in the middle to support the egg, and opens to reveal the ‘surprise’ suspended from a platinum hook. This comprises a double-handled trelliswork platinum basket, set throughout with rose-cut diamonds, full of finely carved white quartz wood anemones, each spring flower with gold wire stem and stamens, the centre set with a demantoid garnet, the leaves delicately carved in nephrite, emerging from a bed of gold moss. The sale will offer important works by Fabergé from a princely collection.
UPDATE: The Winter Egg sold for £22,895,000 (€26,008,720), setting a new world auction record for a work by Fabergé for the third time in its storied history, all at Christie’s.
A selection of 18th century Chinese painted enamels from the Palmer family collection
Art of Asia, a dedicated online auction of Chinese works of art at Christie’s from October 30 to November 12, is led by the final chapter of the Palmer family collection, a distinguished legacy built over three generations by the family that founded the Reading-based biscuit company Huntley & Palmers. Comprising 112 lots the Palmer collection includes Chinese ceramics and works of art from the Song (960-1127), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties (1644-1911), all with exceptional provenance. Among the sale highlights are six enamel ruby backed dishes Yongzheng period (1723-1735), a pale blue ground painted enamel dish 18th century acquired from Spink & Son Ltd, London in 1937, a selection of finely painted 18th century enamels and a rare famille rose black back flowers and bird dish with the Yongzheng six-character mark. The auction will coincide with Asian Art in London from October 27-November 6.
A Family of Cheetahs in a Rocky Landscape attributed to Basawan, Mughal India, circa 1575-80. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £10,245,000 (€11,689,545), 14 times over estimate and a world record auction price for a classical Indian or Islamic painting.
A landmark auction of exceptional paintings from the personal collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan at Christie’s London on October 28 will present the market with an opportunity to acquire masterpieces of Indian and Persian painting. Comprising 95 works, the sale features the paintings that Prince Sadruddin and Princess Catherine Aga Khan chose to live with at their home, Chateau de Bellerive, on the shores of Lake Geneva. This is truly a personal collection that reflects their impeccable taste and discerning eye for quality, rarity and beauty. The group includes some of the most important examples of their kind in any collection in the world, many having been studied and published by leading scholars of the 20th century and featured in ground-breaking exhibitions. With estimates ranging from £2,000 to £1,000,000, this personal collection is expected to realise in excess of £8 million.
BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662) – LA PASCALINE Christie’s Images Ltd., Anna Buklovska UPDATE: THE SALE DID NOT GO AHEAD AFTER A PARIS COURT PROVISIONALLY STOPPED THE MACHINE FROM BEING EXPORTED.
Described by Christie’s as the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction La Pascaline – the first attempt in history to substitute the human mind with a machine – comes up at auction in Paris on November 19 with an estimate of €2 million – €3 million.
Author of a Traité des Sons [treatise on the communication of sounds] at the age of 12, of an essai de géométrie [essay on conic sections] at 16, Blaise Pascal developed the first calculating machine in history at the age of 19. He did so to assist his father, Etienne Pascal, President of the Cour des Aides de Normandie [Board of Excise]. As such, Etienne Pascal was responsible for re-organising the province’s tax revenues – a task requiring countless mathematical operations, accounting calculations and other topographical surveys. To simplify the process, Blaise Pascal designed calculating machines. For the first time in history mental arithmetic had been mechanised. Blaise Pascal designed three types of machines: one for decimal calculations (additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions), one for accounting (for monetary calculations) and one for surveying (for calculating distances).
Only nine original models of this major scientific and technical revolution remain in existence, and nearly all are held in museums across Europe: These include a model in Clermont-Ferrand, a model in Dresden, a model in Bonn belonging to the IBM collection, and a later version at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. This is the only one in private hands, the only known model dedicated to survey calculations and this particular 17th century arithmetic machine is still fully functional. It will highlight the the Bibliothèque Léon Parcé sale.
THE MELLON BLUE – Fancy Vivid Blue pear-shaped cut diamond of 9.51 carats. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR US$25.59 MILLION
The Mellon Blue, a blue diamond of 9.51 carats with an estimate of $20-30 million will lead Christie’s sale of magnificent jewels in Geneva on November 11. One of the finest coloured diamonds to appear on the market the stone – then set as a pendent – belonged to Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny Mellon (1910-2014), an American horticulturalist, philanthropist, and art collector. Bunny Mellon was a symbol of elegance and sophistication whose taste extended to jewellery selected with the same care and sensitivity brought to interiors and gardens. Bunny Mellon’s horticultural vision can be seen at the White House. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked Mellon to redesign the White House Rose Garden where Mellon created more open space for public ceremonies and introduced American species of plants to the garden. Elsewhere, in France, Mellon created a landscape design for the home of Hubert de Givenchy, who was a close friend, and assisted with the restoration of the “Potager du Roi” at the Chateau de Versailles. Graded Internally Flawless and recently set as a ring the diamond is remarkable for both its intense colour and its extraordinary purity.
PETER DOIG – Country Rock, 1998-99 UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £9.2 MILLION
The Collection of Ole Faarup will be a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st Century Art Marquee Week in October. Comprising in the region of 140 lots and with an overall estimate of around £16,000,000–22,000,000 it will be offered in a series of sales, the 20th/21st Century London evening sale on October 15, the Post-War and Contemporary Art day sale on October 16 and a dedicated online auction from October 8–21. Assembled over fifty years it is a striking testament to Ole Faarup’s passion for contemporary art and emerging artists, which made him one of the most respected art collectors of his generation.
Proceeds will benefit The Ole Faarup Art Foundation which carries forward his vision to nurture and support future generations of artists. Inspired by five decades of passionate and thoughtful collecting, the Foundation is dedicated to helping younger artists by placing their work in museums and public collections in Denmark and around the world. A special focus for the Foundation is to support Danish artists up to the age of 50, including those from the Faroe Islands and Greenland – one of its key objectives will be facilitating their first museum or kunsthalle exhibition abroad.
Piet Mondrian – Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue
Auction house Christie’s has projected auction sales of $2.1 billion in the first half of 2025. Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue from the Leonard & Louise Riggio Collection sold for $47.6 million to become most valuable work of art sold at auction so far. Key performance indicators, including overall sell through rate at 88% and hammer versus the low estimate index at 115%, have all showed strength and demonstrated the market leadership of Christie’s. The global auction house sold seven of the top 10 artworks and all top four works of art sold at auction in the six months. In addition, overall auction sales in the leading 20/21 category were stable to last year at $1.3 billion. Luxury sales were up 29%, which includes car sales at Gooding Christie’s (up 12% without Gooding Christie’s). In Jewels, Christie’s sold nine of the top 10 jewels at auction in the first half of the year. This has driven growth of 25%. The Old Master Group drove a 15% rise in auction sales in the first half of the year. Confidence for this continued momentum in the second half has been demonstrated by the record breaking $43.9 million sale in London of Canaletto’s masterpiece Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day.
