Green shoots in London sales
Wooing Asian buyers contributed to a 60 per cent increase, says Colin Gleadell
Most reports on the drop in art auction sales last year noted an improvement in the last quarter. That momentum was sustained emphatically last week at London’s Impressionist and Modern art sales when Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams all reached the higher end of their pre-sale estimates to amass a total of £392 million. That’s a 59 per cent increase over last February’s £246.3 million. Last week’s figure was not quite a record; in 2014 this series reached £414 million. But in Sotheby’s case, its main sale achieved the highest total, £194.8 million, for any auction in Europe. Throughout last year’s downturn, the auctioneers were saying they could sell art if people gave it to them to sell. Their problem was lack of confidence in the supply line. The latest sales will help restore that confidence.
At Christie’s, the hard work they have put in to opening up the Asian market was evident as four of the top-selling lots – a Gauguin Tahitian landscape for £20 million; a Matisse interior at £8.5 million; a Cézanne portrait of his mother at £4.5 million; and an elegant woman and child on a balcony by Berthe Morisot at £4 million – attracted buyers from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, all above estimates. Twenty of the 50 lots also involved Asian bidding for other artists such as Picasso, Eva Gonzalès, Renoir, Boudin, Monet, Dufy, Chagall and Van Gogh. A taste for attractive Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting is evolving, where East and West coincide, sustaining this market for the foreseeable future. Jonathan Green also notes growing demand for slightly edgy or unusual works by the big names, such as Christie’s first lot, an early drawing of a stylish young man by Picasso that sold to a Chinese bidder for a double estimate £773,000.
Green managed to secure a sundappled river scene by Renoir at the low estimate for £4.2 million, but had to pay an over-estimate £1.3 million for a unique, small golden bronze of a reclining figure by Henry Moore.
A lot of attention centred around a group of works that belonged to Russian billionaire Dimitri Rybolovlev, who is in the middle of a dispute with his art supplier Yves Bouvier, whom he claims overcharged him. As if to prove his point, the works by Gauguin, Magritte and Picasso for which he paid an accumulative $163.5 million, sold for $43.7 million (£35.1 million), while another, a very recent casting of a Rodin bronze, did not sell even for half the $10 million he paid for it. But, as Green says, prices can fluctuate with taste. “Who can determine what the ‘right’ price is? It’s not an exact science.”
At Sotheby’s, Asian bidding appeared to be restricted to just five lots – three of the top lots by Picasso and Klimt, and one each by Miró and Chagall. The key factor here was more that Sotheby’s had secured seven of their top-selling lots by guaranteeing a minimum price to the sellers either themselves or through anonymous third parties. Some commentators feel guarantees suppress bidding, but in this case all bar one were subject to competitive bidding. A glistening Sisley snow scene sold within estimate for a record £7.4 million, and a Picasso from his wartime tomato plant series, estimated at £10 million, sold for £17 million. The telephone buyer, according to the insider’s newsletter The Baer Faxt, was Belgian art adviser Alex Brotmann.
The financial skills behind assembling Sotheby’s sale is no better demonstrated than by the top lot, Klimt’s Flower Garden. Sotheby’s had a financial interest in it (ie, owned it in part or in whole) and also involved a third-party guarantor to ensure it sold. At the sale there was Asian bidding, perhaps by the guarantor, before it sold to Sotheby’s representative in Vienna for £48 million – a record for a Klimt landscape and the third-highest price for a work of art at auction in Europe.
Another major factor in the success of these sales was the exchange rate, which made the pound prices look cheap if you were paying in dollars, euros or yuan. It’s a factor that will continue to affect the market this week at London’s contemporary art sales.