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LONDON — The summer auction
season here began at Christie’s on Tuesday night when a
standing-room-only crowd of dealers, collectors and art lovers came
from all over the world to watch and bid on one of the largest
London sales the auction house has held. Early in the evening a
record price for a
Monet, $80.4
million, was set for one of the rarest of his water lilies.
A sea of hands shot in the air when that
painting, “Le
Bassin aux Nymphéas,” which had been
expected to sell for $36 million to $47 million, came up on the
block. Among at least six would-be buyers, a blond woman in the
front row bid tenaciously against several Christie’s representatives
on the telephone with clients. When the price hit nearly $70
million, Christopher Burge, Christie’s honorary chairman in the
United States and one of the evening’s two auctioneers, leaned over
and said to the woman, “Take as long as you like.” The woman,
identified as Tania Buckrell Pos of Arts & Management International,
a London company, ended up winning the painting on behalf of an
unknown client, and the salesroom burst into applause. The previous
record for a Monet, $41.4 million for “The
Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil,” was
set last month at Christie's in New York.
“Le Bassin aux Nymphéas,” from 1919, a large
horizontal work measuring more than 3 feet by 6 feet, is from a
series of four that Monet signed and dated and that experts consider
to be among the most important paintings from his late period.
Unlike most of his late works, which remained unfinished at the time
of his death in 1926, this series was sold by him. One is in the
collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; another was cut in
two; and a third is in a private collection, having been sold at
Christie’s in New York in 1992 for $12.1 million, a stellar price at
the time.
The Monet up for auction Tuesday belonged to
J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller, collectors from Columbus, Ind. Mr.
Miller, the chairman of the Cummins Engine Company who died in 2004,
and Mrs. Miller, who died in February, helped transform Columbus
into a showcase for modern architecture by supporting historic
buildings and projects.
In addition to the Monet the Millers also
owned a Cubist
Picasso, another
popular work in the auction. “La Carafe (Bouteille
et Verre)” 
painted in the winter of 1911-12, went to a
telephone bidder for $7.3 million, above its high $5.9 million
estimate.
The Miller collection was the highlight of an
otherwise bumpy auction. The evening sale totaled $284 million. Of
the 81 works offered, 15 failed to sell. After the collection went
on the block, the energy in the salesroom dissipated, with some of
the lower-priced works selling below their estimates or not at all.
(Final prices include the commission paid to Christie’s: 25 percent
on the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,001 to $1 million
and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
That the Miller collection was sold here
rather than in New York is a sign that London is considered a
crucial marketplace for the top end of the art market, as more rich
Russian collectors put down roots here. (Timing also helped,
Christie’s experts said. The Miller children had estate taxes to
worry about.)
Playing to Russian collectors, Christie’s sale
included a group of works by Russian artists. One, called “The
Flowers,” from 1912, by Nathalia Goncharova, was estimated to bring
$6.9 million to 8.9 million. It sold for $10.8 million, a price that
set two records: for the artist at auction, and for a female artist
at auction.
Another big seller on Tuesday was “Dancers
at the Bar,”
 a
Degas pastel being
sold by an unidentified private collector. The work, from around
1880, is considered important not only for its composition — two
young dancers, their white skirts and pink ballet slippers perfectly
rendered — but also because of its provenance. It had been owned by
Louisine Elder, the wife of H. O. Havemeyer, the American sugar
magnate whose bequest forms the bulk of the Met’s Degas collection.
The pastel remained in the Havemeyer family for three generations
before being sold at Christie’s in New York in 1982 for $1 million.
That price, while seemingly high at the time,
looked like a bargain compared with the bidding on Tuesday. Five
bidders wanted the work, which ended up selling for $26.5 million,
well above its estimate of $7.9 million to $12 million. The winner
was Brett Gorvy, a co-head of Christie’s postwar and Impressionist
art department, bidding on behalf of a client on the telephone. The
speculation in the sales room was that the Christie’s
representatives had on the telephone some of Russia’s newly rich
collectors.
Several works that had belonged to Simon
Sainsbury, the British philanthropist and grocery store magnate who
died in 2006, were also for sale Tuesday. Among the best was an
early pointillist painting by Signac, “Collioure, Les Balancelles,”
a composition of sailboats in the water created in September and
October 1887 while he was in the seaside Mediterranean town of
Collioure. The painting sold for $5.8 million, higher than its
expected estimate of $3.6 million to $4.9 million.
By CAROL VOGEL |
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