Works by Francis Bacon, Peter Doig and Lucian Freud helped Christie’s International raise 78.8 million pounds ($126 million) at an auction in London last night. It was the company’s highest total for a sale of contemporary works in the U.K. capital since June 2008.
The top seller was Bacon’s “Study for a Portrait,” a precursor of the Irish-born artist’s “Pope” paintings, offered by the Swiss entrepreneur and collector Donald M. Hess. The painting sold to a telephone bidder represented by Christie’s specialist Sandra Nedvetskaia, who deals with Russian clients, for 18 million pounds, against two other telephone bidders. The 1953 work was estimated at about 11 million pounds.
The above-estimate price contrasted with the failure of Bacon’s similar 1954 painting, “Man in Blue VI,” estimated at 4 million pounds to 5 million pounds, at Christie’s in February 2009 during the financial crisis.
“Bacon is back,” Offer Waterman, a London-based dealer, said. “The market is strong, though with problems like Greece, it could fall out of bed in two minutes. At the moment, there are people with plenty of cash who are investing in art as an asset class.”
Christie’s 65-lot offering had carried an estimate of 55.3 million pounds to 76.8 million pounds and was part of a series of evening sales in London that is estimated to raise as much as 195 million pounds, reflecting renewed confidence among sellers of high-value contemporary works.
While the mood in the market was lifted by dealers reporting plentiful sales in the $200,000 to $2 million-range earlier this month at the Art Basel fair in Switzerland, auctions remain the arena where international collectors are most prepared to spend multimillion sums.
Doig’s Surprise
The surprise of the evening was the 6.2 million pounds paid by another telephone bidder, represented by Christie’s U.K. chairman David Linley, for Doig’s 2003 to 2004 West Indian landscape, “Red Boat” (Imaginary Boys),” estimated at 1.4 million pounds to 1.8 million pounds.
Another telephone bidder, competing against a third-party guarantor, gave 7 million pounds for Andy Warhol’s 1973 silkscreen painting, “Mao,” a work estimated at 6 million pounds to 8 million pounds.
A 1958-1959 Freud portrait of his lover Suzy Boyt sold for 4.7 million pounds against an estimate of 3.5 million pounds to 4.5 million pounds. Entered by a descendant of the late Simon Sainsbury, “Woman Smiling” was bought by a telephone bidder.
