London auctions hold up thanks to guarantees

Lot 9, Lucian Freud, Child with Dog, est. £1.5-2

Post-war British art featured prominently, with a large nude with a distorted face by Lucian Freud 'Ria, Naked Portrait' from 2006-07 estimated at £10-15m and likely to go to the guarantor for £11.8m, while another of his paintings, a female face also featuring a strong impasto of oil colour, realised £3.4m at the guaranteed low estimate of £3m.

The good momentum continues for British Pop Art, with a recent landscape by David Hockney 'More Woldgate Tmber' from 2009 selling for £4.6m, within the estimate of £3.8-5.5m.

Lot 30, David Hockney, More Woldgate Timber, October 13th 2009

In the American Pop arena, a playful 'Balloon Monkey (Blue)' huge shimmering sculpture of over 3 x 6 metres by Jeff Koons, confirmed the guaranteed low estimate of £6.5 million for a total of £7,555,000.

Lot 13, Jeff Koons, Balloon Monkey (Blue)

A large late painting by Willem de Kooning from 1986, formerly in the collection of musician Eric Clapton, fetched £3.5m, well below its estimate, while a characteristically topical 'Hurricane Nurse' by Richard Prince stopped at £4.2m from a guaranteed estimate of £3.5-5.5m.

Lot 29, Rene Magritte, Le grand style

The few bidding contests occurred for surrealist works by Magritte, with a guache 'Le grand style' doubling its estimate to £2.6 million, and a large, soaring, mysterious figure 'Rogomelec' by Leonor Fini doubling its low estimate to £907,200.

The focus on Surrealism is also justified by the celebration of its centenary, which is particularly felt in France where it is the subject of an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.

Lot 31, Alighiero Boetti, Mappa

Italian art, which is now mainly traded in Paris, was present with a rare 'Map' by Alighiero Boetti from 1979, the Afghan period, which exceeded its guaranteed estimate of £1.5-2.5 million to £2.3 million with commissions.

The auction was preceded in the morning by the catalogue of Impressionist and Modern works of art on paper, which were particularly well received, the majority of them fetching prices well above their estimates, for a total revenue of £6.1m, further demonstrating how the art market is composed of a myriad of segments that often follow different logics, in this case more sensitive to quality and historicity than the subsequent general catalogue.

The two daily catalogues on 10 October added £19.8 million, bringing the total result for the London week for the auction house to £108 million.

Lot 3, Bridget Riley, Gaillard 2, est. £1,500,000-2,000,000

On the same evening of 9 October, Sotheby's sold only 22 lots with as many as 10 guarantees; the 18 works sold brought £37.6m: one of the smallest catalogues since the 2009 crisis.

Among the four unsold lots were two million lots by Andy Warhol with a self-portrait estimated at £3-4m, and a work by Yoshimoto Nara (estimated at £2.5-3.5m).

Lot 4, David Hockney, L’Arbois, Sainte Maxime, 1968, est. £7,000,000 - 10,000,000

English art was again in the limelight with David Hockney's 1968 landscape 'L'Arbois, Sainte-Maxime' far exceeding its guaranteed estimate of £7-10 million at £13.1 million, a third of the total realisation, and still ten times the price paid in 2011 for the same painting.

Lot 7, Lucian Freud, Ria, Naked Portrait

Also in the field of English art, an early portrait 'Child with a Toy Dog' by Lucien Freud, and a large composition of Bridget Riley's characteristic colourful geometries 'Gillard 2', both secured the high estimate of £2m, while a wooden sculpture by Barb>Barbara Hepworth 'Reclining Figure II' from 1955-56 stopped at the guaranteed low estimate of £1.2m.

Another sculpture, a large 'mobile' by Alexander Calder 'Fifteen Black Leaves', stopped within the estimate at £2.7 million.

The 'freshly painted' works of very young artists, on whom speculation had been concentrated and who enjoyed a separate, dedicated catalogue, now disappeared from the catalogues.

The auction held on the morning of 10 October added £5.3 million in proceeds, with three quarters of the 60 lots sold.

The uncertainty of the moment also leads to a particular development in private treaty sales, on which Sotheby's is betting heavily with an exhibition of works presented in succession in the two capitals, with a declared total of £220m, including an abstract work by Kandinsky 'Le Rond Rouge' from 1939.

Phillips' catalogue of 10 October was also led by David Hockney's 2005 sun landscape 'Path Through Wheat Field, July' depicting golden fields of wheat, which realised £3.3m from an estimate of £2-3m.

Lot 6, David Hockney, Path Through Wheat Field, July, 2005

The total realisation was £15.1m, with 24 jobs sold out of the 31 offered; the reduction in guarantees brings the percentage sold back to between 75-80%, physiological values when the market is not 'drugged' by withdrawals and windfall guarantees.

It struggles to sell a customary decorative 'Pumpkin' byYayoi Kusama that touches the low estimate of £2 million with commissions alone.

The result for the two Pop portraits of equal size and period executed in 1982 byAndy Warhol of the then Princes Charles and Diana was interesting: the princess reached the low estimate of £1.2 million, while the prince-turned-king found no buyers.

Lot 25, Lot-25-Lucio-Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1967

For Italian art, a composition with 5 cuts on a green field by Lucio Fontana stopped at £889,000, at the low estimate of £850,000.

Unsold, however, was a large painting by Marino Marini 'Il Cavaliere Azzurro' from 1952-54 estimated at £600-900,000.

The daily auction on 11 October added £8.9 million thanks to 123 lots sold out of 154, bringing the week's total revenue for Philips to £24 million.

The Parisian catalogues of the current week are strongly influenced by the dialogue with the major museum exhibitions in the French capital, which are growing strongly despite the political and fiscal climate of uncertainty.

Sotheby's focuses on Surrealist works, linking up with the current exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, while Christie's continues its effort to dedicate an international stage to Italian art on 18 October with its catalogue 'Avant Gardes' including 'Thinking Italian', once beaten in London.

In addition to the usual red 'Cuts' by Fontana and an 'Achrome' by Manzoni estimated at EUR 2.5-3.5 million, Arte Povera is on stage with eight lots from the historical period 1969-79, also the subject of the concurrent exhibition at the Pinault Collection in Paris.

The appointment with the auctions is therefore 17-18 October in the French capital, only then will it be possible to take real stock of the long session in Europe in anticipation of the American mega-auctions the following month.