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    • Posts Tagged ‘sotheby’s’

    SEAN SCULLY AT SOTHEBY’S CONTEMPORARY SALES

    Friday, February 18th, 2011

    Enter Yellow is the title of this 1999 work by Sean Scully (click on image to enlarge)

    Small Grey Wall by Scullly dates from 2002. (click on image to enlarge)

    Enter Yellow by the Irish artist Sean Scully made a hammer price of  £409,250 at Sotheby’s  Contemporary art evening auction in London on February 15.  It had been estimated at £300,000-500,000.

    The following day Scully, who draws inspiration from the low stone walls of the west of Ireland, had another work at Sotheby’s day sale.  His work entitled Small Grey Wall, signed and dated 2002, made a hammer price with buyer’s premium of £289,250.  It had been estimated at £200,000-300,000.

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    CONTRASTING LANDSCAPES AT SOTHEBY’S IRISH SALE

    Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

    Paul Henry's Achill Village at Sotheby's Irish sale on March 29. (click on image to enlarge) UPDATE: IT MADE £58,850

    Roderic O'Conor, Landscape at Cassis at Sotheby's Irish sale on March 29. (click on image to enlarge) UPDATE; IT MADE £337,250

    Roderic O’Conor and Paul Henry sought inspiration from landscapes in different though beautiful locations.

    O’Conor favoured in France while Henry is most noted for his art in the west of Ireland.

    Each one features at Sotheby’s annual Irish sale in London on March 29.  Roderic O’Conor’s Landscape, Cassis is estimated at £120,000-180,000 (€140,000-210,000) while Paul Henry’s Achill Village is estimated at £30,000-50,000 (€36,300-60,500)

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    Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds Make Four Times Estimate

    Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

    Gerhard Richters Abstraktes Bild, the top lot at Sotheby's Contemporary sale in London. (click on image to enlarge)

    The first of Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds (Kui Hua Zi) ever to appear at auction made £349,250 (£3.50 per seed) at Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art.  The 100 kilograms of the porcelain seeds made more than four times the pre-sale estimate of £80,000-120,000 in London. Four bidders both in the saleroom and on the telephones battled to acquire 100,000 of the artist’s seeds.  The seeds in this work of art are not from Tate Modern’s 11th Unilever Turbine Hall commission.

    Sunflower Seeds draws together many of the themes and formal concerns of Weiwei’s work to date.  Sotheby’s described it as a sculptural piece which is at once singular and complex in form and meaning.  This one was executed in 2010 and is from an edition of ten unique variants.
    This evening’s Contemporary Art evening sale realised £44,359,900.  When results from last weeks ‘Looking Closely’ sale are added it brings the total for Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction series  so far this season to £88,022,550.  This is the  second-highest total for a February Contemporary Art sales series in London, and the highest total since July 2008.
    The top lot was as Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild of 1990, which sold for £7,209,250.
    (see antiquesandartireland.com post for February 10)
    UPDATE: The contemporary art day auction brought in a total of  £13,930,200 at Sotheby’s on February 16.  The result brings the overall total for contemporary art at Sotheby’s this season to £101,952,750. This is well above pre-sale expectations of £56-78million.

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    RECORD FOR ANY SURREALIST WORK AT AUCTION

    Thursday, February 10th, 2011

    Dali's Portrait de Paul Eluard (click on image to enlarge)

    Portrait de Paul Eluard – a masterpiece by Salvador Dali – soared above its pre-sale estimate of £3.5-5 million to sell to an anonymous bidder on the phone for £13,481,250/$21,688,635 at Sotheby’s in London on February 10.

    This is a record for any Surrealist work of art at auction.   This price triples the record established for the artist at Christie’s on the previous evening in London.  It also stands a new record price for any Surrealist work of art sold at auction.

    The single owner sale of Modern and Contemporary Art, Looking Closely: A Private Collection brought a well above estimate total of £93.5 million.  This outstanding result of £93,520,600 / $150,455,941 / €110,307,368 was achieved against an estimate of £39,298,000-54,987,000.

    The top lot of the night was Francis Bacon’s  triptych Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud.

    The sale, which was 100% sold, set records for Dali, Julio González, Jean Fautrier and Wols. Wols’s Sans Titre (1946-1947) is one of only 40 works to have been created by an artist who  became a leading figure in art in Post-War Europe. It went for  £2,617,250, 17 times its pre-sale high estimate.

    See antiquesandartireland.com posts for February 5 and February 10.

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    STRONG BIDDING ACROSS ALL RANGES AT SOTHEBYS

    Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

    Sotheby’s day sale of Impressionist and Modern art on February 9 brought in £21,463,975 against a pre-sale estimate of  £16,934,000 – 23,608,000. The top was La Mandoline Noire, 1926, a late work by Juan Gris. It made £926,050.  Altogether 212 out of 266 lots sold, with strong bidding in all price ranges.  Over 500 people registered to bid from as far afield as Africa, US, Asia, Russia, Australia, North and South America and Europe. The total for Impressionist and Modern art at Sotheby’s over the last two days is £90,298,370.

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    PICASSO MAKES £25 MILLION AT SOTHEBY’S

    Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

    Picasso's La Lecture (click on image to enlarge)

    Picasso’s La Lecture sold  for  £25,241,250, more than double the low estimate, at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sale. There was a heated six minute long bidding contest between seven bidders on the phone and in the saleroom.  The 1932 painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter was bought over the phone by an anonymous buyer.

    The sale brought in £68,834,400, well within the pre-sale estimate of £55,630,000-79,250,000.  There were 42 lots on offer and 32 sold, mostly at prices at or above their estimate.  Fifteen works made over one million pounds and the average lot value was £2.15 million.
    Among the works that failed to sell was Alberto Giacometti’s bronze portrait of his younger brother from 1957.  Grand buste de Diego avec bras was estimated at £3.5 to £5 million.  Dealers reckoned it failed to sell because of its pale colour.

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    ART FORTNIGHT IN LONDON

    Monday, February 7th, 2011

    Georges Braque (1882-1963) Nature morte à la guitare (rideaux rouge) signed and dated 'G.Braque 38' is estimated at £3.5-£5.5 million. (click to enlarge) UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR £3.9 MILLION

    Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art will change hands in London this fortnight.  Two weeks of major art sales in London begin on  February 8.  It is anticipated that the market recovery will see more than £400m spent on art in the coming days

    Sotheby’s kick off with  with an evening sale of impressionist and modern art and continue into next week with contemporary works. Their 42-lot evening session is estimated at £55-£79 million.  This sale  includes the most expensive lot of the week, Picasso’s “La Lecture”. The high estimate of this portrait of his lover Marie-Thérèse dated 1932 is £18 million. Sotheby’s other evening sale, on Thursday, February 10, is a private collection estimated at £39-£55 million.
    At Christie’s there is an estimate of £73-£109 million for the the Impressionist and Modern  and the Art of the Surreal sales on February 9. This is the second highest pre-sale estimate for the February Impressionist sales at Christie’s in London. The highlight is Nature morte à “L’Espérance”, a still life painted by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in 1901 while he was living in Tahiti. It is expected to realise £7-£10 million. (See antiquesandartireland.com for January 7) The sale includes four works to be sold by the Art Institute of Chicago (two Picasso’s, a Braque and a Matisse), and will feature the artists Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Fernand Léger.
    Self-portraits by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat will star in contemporary-art auctions in London set to raise at least 72.5 million pounds ($116 million).

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    BACON STUDIES FOR A PORTRAIT OF LUCIAN FREUD AT SOTHEBY’S

    Saturday, February 5th, 2011

    Bacon's study for a portrait of Lucian Freud (click on images to enlarge)


    Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a portrait of Lucian Freud features at a sale at Sotheby’s on February 10.  On offer is an exceptional private collection of 60 European modern and contemporary works collected over 30 years.  Along with the Bacon (estimated at £7-9 million) it includes work by Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Alberto Giacometti, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Lucian Freud, Alexander Calder and Eduardo Chillida.
    UPDATE: The Bacon headlined Sotheby’s Evening Auction ‘Looking Closely – A Private Collection’. Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud, made the outstanding sum of £23,001,250/$37,004,411 –triple the pre-sale estimate. More than ten bidders from four continents competed for this exceptional and intimate artwork, before it finally sold after 7 minutes to an anonymous buyer in the room.

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    SOTHEBY’S IRISH SALE ON MARCH 29

    Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

    Lavery's portrait of Lady Gwendoline Churchill (click to enlarge) UPDATE: IT MADE £121,250

    Sotheby’s 17th annual Irish sale in London on March 29 brings together quality Irish artworks from all corners of the globe.  It features art from a range of dates and stylistic movements and focuses attention on the richness of Ireland’s longstanding artistic output.

    Paysage by Roderic O'Conor at Sotheby's. (click on image to enlarge) UPDATE: IT MADE £337,250

    Sir John Lavery’s portrait of Lady Gwendoline Churchill (estimated at £100,000-£150,000)  has come from a private UK collection, where it has been for several generations.  It depicts the sister in law of Winston Churchill.
    Paysage by Roderic O’Conor is estimated at £120,00-£180,000.  It has re-surfaced from an American private collection and Sotheby’s say it is one of his most accomplished Fauvist landscapes to appear at auction.
    Other highlights include work by Basil Blackshaw, Colin Middleton, Sean Scully, William Scott and Louis le Brocquy.

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    NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR TITIAN AT SOTHEBY’S

    Thursday, January 27th, 2011

    Titian's A Sacre Conversazione (click on image to enlarge)

    There was a new auction record for Venetian Renaissance master Titian at Sotheby’s in New York on January 27.  A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria sold for $16,882,500 to a European private collector.  The painting is also known as The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine.  The price paid exceeded the previous record of $13.6 million, which had held for 20 years.  A Sacra Conversazione is one of only a handful of multi-figured compositions by Titian that remain in private hands, and is the most important to appear at auction in decades.

    See antiquesandartireland.com post for November 2, 2010

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