Why no one rules salerooms like Picasso
‘Picasso is modern; he is a widely recognised brand; and the supply of his work is plentiful’
The art market seemed in robust form last week as London’s Impressionist and Modern art sales amassed £342million – right on target. Ever competitive, Christie’s is boasting majority market share with £182million of sales, while Sotheby’s is claiming a higher average price by realising £155.5million for half as many lots. In terms of artists, though, there was only one winner: Picasso, by a mile.
A total of 164 or 15per cent of the lots offered were by him, and only seven, mostly drawings, didn’t sell. Cumulatively, Picasso registered just over £127million of sales, or a remarkable 37.4per cent of the week’s total. Prices ranged from £800 for a ceramic tile to £49.8million, the most ever paid for a painting at auction in Europe, for a jagged, highly coloured, 1939 portrait of his lover Marie-thérèse Walter.
No artist dominates their sector as Picasso does. Challenged only by Andy Warhol in the contemporary market, Picasso has been the market leader for as long as most people can remember. Until the sale of the $450million Leonardo last November, Picasso held the top price at auction with the $179million achieved for his 1955 painting
Women of Algiers (version O), in 2015. His stock is as blue-chip as you can get.
Melanie Clore, an independent art adviser who was worldwide co-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art department for 16 years and its chairman of Europe between 2011 and 2016, cites the 1993 Stanley Jseeger sale in 1993 as the moment when “Picasso fever” became clear. In a move considered incredibly risky, Sotheby’s had offered all 88 of Seeger’s Picassos in one sale (unless they’re very sure of demand, most high-end auctions will try to limit the number of pieces by one artist to two or three per sale), but in the end they sold every one.
During the boom of the late Eighties, the new buyers driving the Picasso market were Japanese, now they are often Chinese. However, last week, Chinese bidders were mostly outgunned on the top Picasso lots by a quiet Englishman in a grey suit named Harry Smith, who bid without flinching until he won 13 Picassos (including that 1939 portrait of Walter) for £112.5million.
Smith is the chairman of the art advisory and valuation service Gurr Johns. He bought the company in the Eighties, when it was housed above a shoe shop in Maidstone, for the £100 he had in his pocket and a £39,900 bank loan. Today, it values around $10billion (£7.24billion) of art, antiques and luxury items each year. Among the sales he has advised on are the record £41million Monet water-lily painting sold at Christie’s in 2008, and the £49million Gustav Klimt flower garden painting sold at
Picasso’s Femme au Béret et à la Robe Quadrillée, of Marie-thérèse Walter
Sotheby’s last year. Less is known about his buying activities, which are usually conducted behind the scenes. So it was all the more remarkable that he was seen spending so much in public last week. Although he will not be drawn on exactly who he was buying the Picassos for, he says the artist is a good investment “because he is modern; he is a widely recognised brand; and the supply of his work is plentiful [he made some 10,000 paintings and 6,000 drawings]”. He was also, of course, a genius.
Sadly for Sotheby’s and Christie’s, neither had any of Picasso’s paintings from 1932, the focus of Tate Modern’s blockbuster Picasso
1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy, opening this week. Paintings from this pivotal year, particularly a series of sensually curvaceous portraits of Marie-thérèse Walter, have been Picasso’s most popular on the market in recent times. Included in the exhibition, for instance, is Le
Rêve, which Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn sold to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen for $155million in 2013. As is Nude,
Green Leaves and Bust, which sold for $106.5million in 2010.
Neither of these is for sale (at least officially).
However, Phillips has a 1932 painting of Walter, which is tipped to sell this week for far more than its £12million estimate. And looking ahead to May in New York, Christie’s Rockefeller sale includes a $70-million Rose period work and Sotheby’s a 1932 portrait of Walter titled Le Repos. A profile of her upturned sleeping head, this painting is perhaps an accurate reflection of Picasso prices, having increased by more than 10per cent a year over the past 25 years. In 1993 it sold for $2.46million. In May it is estimated to fetch up to $35million – maybe more if Harry Smith makes an appearance.