Guarantees and collections dominate Sotheby's and Phillips auctions

The two catalogues offered by Phillips and Sotheby's on the evening of 19 May added almost $420 million to the total realisation of the auction session, with near-total sell-through rates, but largely dependent on third-party guarantees.

In the late afternoon Phillips sold all 41 lots remaining after two withdrawals, for proceeds of $115.2m, thanks to guarantees on nearly half of the works and the top ten realisations, all by established artists; four works may have been saved by the guarantees in the absence of further raises.
Only one lot crossed the $10 million threshold, a well-known 1964 Andy Warhol black-and-white composition 'Sixteen Jackies' that stopped at $16.2 million with commissions, down from a guaranteed estimate of $15-20 million, making a significant loss for those who bought it three years ago for nearly $26 million. Two other works by the master of Pop Art confirmed their respective estimates, bringing another $10.4 million in total. The purchase of an abstract composition by Richter 'Besen' from 1984, which changed hands in 2022 for more than USD 10 million, also led to a net loss by realising USD 8 million with commissions from an estimate of USD 6.5-8.5 million. The market therefore severely punished this short-term speculative behaviour.

Not even a composition by Pollock from 1948 directly owned by the auctioneer shone, stopping at $9.2m, within the estimate of $7-10m, outperformed by a classic winter view with snow by Monet from 1879 that touched the high estimate of $10m. The auction registered four records for three historic artists, including Lee Bontecou with a two-dimensional work from 1985 that fetched up to $4.2m from its high estimate of $1.2-1.8m, and a Contemporary artist, Joseph Yeager with a photo-realistic canvas from 2021 that fetched $477,000, six times its high estimate. A "Natura Morta" by Morandi fetched $2.3m above its estimate. Half of the 12 artists in the catalogue exceeded their high estimates before commissions, confirming the continuing interest in this field, including works by Helen Frankenthaler, Olga de Amaral, Georgia O'Keeffe, Martha Jungwirth and Anna Weyant (the fiancée of gallerist Larry Gagosian) which fetched close to $1m.

As many as 30 of the 42 lots in the catalogue (after a withdrawal) at Sotheby's on 19 May came to auction guaranteed by third parties. Thanks to the intervention of the guarantees in about ten cases, i.e. one third, only one work failed to find buyers, a posthumous casting of Rodin's 'Thinker' with an unrealistic estimate of 8-12 million dollars. The total realisation of the evening auction was close to $304m, within expectations, with six adjudications above the $10m threshold, nine of the top ten realisations protected by guarantees which, in three cases, may have saved the lot in the absence of further bids.

Provenance from theBarbier-Muller collection strongly aided the most desirable lot of the evening, an unusual 1919 Matisse composition 'La Chaise Lorraine' long contended for until it nearly doubled its asking estimate of $25m, totalling $48.4m with commissions. The theme of the chair portrait resumed thirty years later in van Gogh's composition dedicated to Gauguin in Arles; a second work by Matisse from 1924 'Le Seance on Marin', on the other hand, needed the intervention of collateral to pass hands at the base estimate of $20m, despite the far more common subject matter of a pair of figures in a characteristically red-tinged interior.