Posts Tagged ‘sotheby’s’
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).
Tags: art, Christie's, contemporary, Impressionist, Modern, sotheby's
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS | Comments Off on ART FORTNIGHT IN LONDON
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.
Tags: bacon, Freud, sotheby's
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS | Comments Off on BACON STUDIES FOR A PORTRAIT OF LUCIAN FREUD AT SOTHEBY’S
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.
Tags: Irish art, sotheby's
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS | Comments Off on SOTHEBY’S IRISH SALE ON MARCH 29
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
Tags: new york, Record, sotheby's, Titian
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS | Comments Off on NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR TITIAN AT SOTHEBY’S
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
Part of the Jerni Collection. (click on image to enlarge)
THE greatest toy and train collection in the world is available for private sale through Sotheby’s as a single lot. Now on show in New York the Jerni Collection is estimated at 10 million dollars by Sotheby’s. Others say it could be worth $40/50 million.
What is on view throughout January and February represents about 20% of a collection of 35,000 objects assembled over 50 years by a single dedicated collector. The pieces date from roughly 1850–1940, and form an encyclopedic collection of toys and trains from every major European and American manufacturer including Märklin, Bing, Ernst Plank Carette and Rock & Graner, chronicling the ‘Golden Age’ of European toy manufacturing.
“Assembling this collection has been a 50 year journey for me,” commented Jerry Greene, 67, a Pennsylvania-based music executive who owns the collection. “They survived both world wars. For me it’s part of history.”
Half of the collection was made by Maerklin. Some are outfitted with working fountains and clocks; many are replicas of the actual buildings in Europe. A highlight is an elevated train platform from 1895 with two curved staircases parting like a curtain at the center. “I put it together piece-by-piece” Greene said. Like all true collectors the fun for him has been the search. Now that he is ready to part with it he thinks he will start collecting something else.
Tags: Jerni, sotheby's, Toys, trains
Posted in AUCTIONS, COLLECTIBLES | Comments Off on GREATEST TOY TRAIN COLLECTION IN WORLD AT SOTHEBY’S
Friday, January 7th, 2011
The Madonna and Child enthroned with Angels, flanked by St. Bridget and the Archangel Michael at Sotheby's in New York. (click to enlarge)
SIGNIFICANT works by artists from across Europe feature at Sotheby’s Important Old Master Paintings & Sculpture sale in New York on January 27. This sale features Titian’s Sacra Conversazione (see antiquesandartireland.com post for November 2) estimated at $15/$20 million.
Among the works to be sold by the J. Paul Getty Museum to benefit future painting acquisitions is
The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels and Flanked by Saint Bridget and the Archangel Michael. Erroneously known as “The Poggibonsi Triptych” the work has been attributed to the as-yet-unidentified Master of Pratovecchio, who worked in and around Florence in the mid-15th century. It is estimated at $200/300,000.
The afternoon session of Old Master Paintings and Sculpture is led by an Italian marble relief portrait of Cosimo I de ‘Medici by Baccio Bandinelli, executed just prior to the future Grand Duke’s rise to power in 1537.
Luis Meléndez’s Still Life with Tomatoes, a Bowl of Aubergines and Onions leads the Spanish paintings. It is estimated at $1.5/2 million. A popular exhibition of 40 still lifes by Meléndez (1716-1780), organised in collaboration with the Prado Museum in Madrid, was held at the National Gallery of Ireland in the summer of 2004.
Tags: new york, Old Masters, sotheby's
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS | Comments Off on OLD MASTERS FROM ACROSS EUROPE AT SOTHEBY’S IN NEW YORK
Monday, December 20th, 2010
THE Season to be Merry extended year round in some quarters.
Sotheby’s wine auctions in 2010 brought an overall global total of US$88,270,602. This is more than double the figure for 2009 and the highest in the company’s forty years of wine auctions. There was extraordinary demand from Asian collectors with every bottle offered in eight Hong Kong auctions finding a buyer and major Asian participation in London and Hong Kong sales. Globally 99% of wine lots found buyers, and all 23 auctions exceeded the high estimate.
The Asian sales were led by the two auctions of wine direct from the Châteaux – Cheval Blanc, Yquem and Dom Pérignon which fetched $2.6 million in May and Lafite Ex Cellars which brought $8.3 million in October.
There was a new record for a single standard sized bottle at the Ex Cellars sale when a bottle of Château Lafite 1869 sold for $232,692.
Sotheby’s will offer the Andrew Lloyd Webber Wine Collection in Hong Kong on January 22 next.
Tags: Record, sotheby's, wine
Posted in AUCTIONS, Miscellaneous | Comments Off on RECORD BREAKING WINE SALES AT SOTHEBY’S
Saturday, December 18th, 2010
An antique model of the Lusitania made $194,500 at
Sotheby’s in New York on December 17. The actual wreck of the ill fated vessel on the seabed off Ireland changed hands for just £1,000 in 1968. The Marklin model, made c1912 in Germany, was the top lot in the sale of the Malcolm Forbes toy collection. The sale realised $2,381,008.
Sotheby’s say the model, which has become the most expensive toy boat ever sold at auction, was crafted by Marklin at the height of their creative genius and that, like good wine, age has improved it. Lusitania was launched in England in 1906 and made her maiden voyage in 1907. The transatlantic liner was hit by a German torpedo off the coast of Cork in 1915. The Cunard Line vessel sank in just 18 minutes, losing 1,198 of her 1,959 civilian passengers. In 1967 the wreck of the Lusitania was sold by the Liverpool & London War Risks Insurance Association to former US Navy diver John Light for £1,000. Gregg Bemis became a co-owner of the wreck in 1968, and by 1982 had bought out his partners to become sole owner. Mr. Bemis is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who ran unsuccessfully three times as a Republican candidate in New Mexico.
See antiquesandartireland.com post for December 9
Tags: Lusitania, Malcolm Forbes, sotheby's, Toys
Posted in AUCTIONS, COLLECTIBLES | Comments Off on ANTIQUE MODEL OF LUSITANIA MORE VALUABLE THAN THE REAL THING
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Jane Austen's Emma signed by Maria Edgeworth. (click to enlarge)
AN extremely rare first edition of Jane Austen’s Emma, signed by the Irish authoress Maria Edgeworth, made a hammer price with buyer’s premium of £79,250 at Sotheby’s in London on December 16. It is the only known copy of Emma given by Jane Austen – Britain’s most beloved authoress – to a fellow writer.
Emma was published in three volumes by John Murray on December 23, 1815. This lot comprised volumes I and 3. No part of the manuscript for Emma survives and no presentation copy inscribed by Jane Austen herself is known to exist. This copy has remained in Maria Edgeworth’s family ever since. The Irish writer is regarded as the creator, in Castle Rackrent, of the first true historical novel in English.
At the same sale a first printing in England of James Joyce’s Ulysses, published in London by John Lane the Bodley Head in 1936, sold for £11,875. This was number 89 of a limited edition of 1,000 copies.
Sotheby’s English Literature and History and Childrens books and illustrations sale realised £821,813. (see antiquesandartireland.com post for October 29)
Tags: jane austen, literature, maria edgeworth, sotheby's
Posted in AUCTIONS, COLLECTIBLES | Comments Off on JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA, SIGNED BY MARIA EDGEWORTH, SELLS FOR £79,250
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Sir Stanley Spencer's Hilda and I at Pond Street, dating from 1954, sold for £1,430,050. (click on image to enlarge)
There was a new auction record for a work by Sir Stanley Spencer at Sotheby’s in London on December 15. Hilda and I at Pond Street, dating from 1954, sold for £1,430,050 ($2,249,612), far in excess of its pre-sale estimate of £400,000-600,000. James Rawlin, senior director in 20th century British art at Sotheby’s, said the result helps establish Spencer as one of the central figures of figurative art in Britain in the 20th century.
Works by Frank Auerbach, Dame Barbara Hepworth, L.S. Lowry, Christopher Wood and Lynn Chadwick also performed well in the sale of 20th century British art. It realised a total of £8,255,625. Sotheby’s pointed out that there is a higher price in US dollars for a work by Spencer. His Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta; Listening from Punts made £1,237,600 / $2,270,852 in June 2004.
Tags: art auction record, Sir Stanley Spencer, sotheby's
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS | Comments Off on NEW AUCTION RECORD FOR SIR STANLEY SPENCER AT SOTHEBY’S
