German and American paintings drive evening auctions in London
Sotheby’s sold 28 lots for £46.1 million, with de Kooning and Richter leading the way. Phillips had a successful auction, selling lots for £14.8 million, with the German master once again dominating the proceedings. Christie’s day sales brought in a further £22 million
Key points
On the evening of 15 October, Sotheby’s London presented a catalogue of 37 lots, reduced to 34 following the withdrawal of three works, including a ‘cabinet’ by Damien Hirst estimated at 1–1.5 million pounds. The total for the 28 lots sold reached 46.1 million pounds, with nine guaranteed lots, including the top three sales, two of which may have prevented the lot from remaining unsold. Only four lots exceeded their respective low estimates before the addition of commissions, in a rather subdued atmosphere which nevertheless saw some bidding competition both in the auction room and online.
Post-war American art
Three major figures in American art accounted for a significant proportion of the sales. An abstract composition by Willem de Kooning from 1977 attracted a couple of bids, pushing the price to 9.7 million pounds – just shy of the 10 million mark – from a guaranteed estimate of 8–12 million, whilst a meditative work on paper by Rothko from 1969, featuring sombre black and brown tones, sold after just one online bid at the guaranteed lower estimate of 3 million, amounting to 3.750 million pounds including commissions.
We then move on to the Pop Art of Warhol, with two works in the top ten: ‘Four Marylin (Reversal series)’ at 2.7 million pounds, within the estimate of 2.2–2.8 million, and a large, two-metre portrait of Goethe which exceeded the low estimate to reach 1.5 million pounds including commission.
German painting
The second lot was an elegant abstract composition by Gerhard Richter from 1992, measuring two metres by one metre in length and featuring grey-green tones, which sold for less than the guaranteed estimate of 6–8 million, despite attracting three bids, including the winning bid in the auction room of 5.4 million, equivalent to 6.7 million pounds including commissions. A second grey work by the German master of colour, measuring four metres and on glass, failed to find a buyer, whilst a third, also on glass but transparent and smaller in size, sold at the lower end of the guaranteed estimate of 600,000 pounds. Two other German artists achieved sales in the millions: two works by Georg Baselitz, who recently passed away, were hotly contested, each fetching over two million, with ‘P.D. Idol’ – a distorted figure from 1964 – exceeding the guaranteed estimate to reach 2.4 million pounds including commission. Two of his works on paper (from 1965) out of three offered, from the Duerckheim collection, found buyers within the estimates. A work by Albert Oehlen, ‘Schwindel’ from 1996, sold for just under 1.7 million pounds.
British artists
The good run continues for David Hockney, with a large-scale 1985 painting, ‘Henry Reading’, which, thanks to a final bid, sold for just over the reserve price at £2.9 million including commission, just one million less than a very recent floral composition (part of a series of 25) from 2021, which was surprisingly hotly contested up to 1.9 million from an estimate of 450–650 thousand pounds. The other most hotly contested lot of the evening was a small pastel by Michael Andrew ‘Butterly Fish’ from 1978, an artist well known to British specialists who produced very few works until his death in 1995; it was sold after several minutes for 550,000 pounds, against an estimate of 80,000–120,000 pounds. However, the large, pink-toned canvas ‘Grannies’ by Banksy, estimated at 1.5–2 million pounds, remained unsold; his market appears to have finally slowed down following the recent speculative rush.
