Displaying items by tag: auction record

A celebrated portrait of a Parisian actress by Edouard Manet set a new auction record for the artist Wednesday, during the second day of a major fall sale in New York of impressionist and modern art.

“Le Printemps,” or “Spring,” was sold at Christie’s Wednesday for $65 million, almost doubling the previous record of $33.2 million for the French impressionist.

Frans Verbeeck's "The Mocking of Human Follies" (c.1560) was sold at auction last night in Vienna for a staggering £2.3 million. The sum is an all-time record for the artist. It also marks one of the highest selling prices ever achieved at an Austrian auction.

The auction of the masterpiece took place last night at the Viennese headquarters of the Dorotheum's auction house. The Verbeeck painting is said to have caused quite a stir at the auction house's Old Master Paintings sale. According to the Austrian newspaper "The Local," the painting had a presale estimate of between £709,000 to £945,000. It is reported that the work was sold to an unnamed Flemish bidder - after a hard-fought bidding war.

Nothing could be more tranquil than the woman in a shimmering painting by Claude Monet, forecast to set a new record for a portrait by the artist.

He captured Alice Hoschedé relaxing in a shady corner of his sunny French garden – but appearances were deceptive: in 1881 storm clouds were about to burst around the household.

The painting, "Alice Hoschedé au jardin," will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York in November, estimated at up to $35m (£22m).

A painting from Cy Twombly’s celebrated “blackboard” series could set a record for the artist at auction. “Untitled” (1970) is expected to fetch between $35 million and $55 million on November 12 at Christie’s in New York. Before being offered to buyers at the auction house’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, the work will be exhibited in London and San Francisco.

Twombly, who is best known for his calligraphic, graffiti-like paintings, executed his “blackboard” series  between 1966 and 1971. Using contrasting lines against a light or dark background, these rhythmic works feature geometric shapes, words, letters, and numbers, calling to mind a classroom blackboard or a pupil’s notebook. With its swirling landscape of loops drawn in white crayon against a dark gray background, “Untitled” is hypnotic, entrancing the viewer with its formulaic loops.

Christie’s has announced that two monumental works by Andy Warhol will lead its highly anticipated Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 12. The silkscreen paintings, “Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]” (1963) and “Four Marlons” (1966), are expected to fetch around $70 million each. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, suspects that interested buyers could try to acquire both works and keep them as a unique pair. Warhol’s current record at auction was set last November at Sotheby’s when his two-panel painting “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” sold for $104.5 million.

“Triple Elvis” and “Four Marlons” are being offered for sale by the German casino company WestSpiel.

Christie's evening auction of classical decorative arts  has realised £31,048,500/ $53,186,081/€38,934,819, marking the highest total for any and breaking the previous record established by Christie’s Exceptional Sale in 2011 at £28.7million.

The top price was paid for a controversial Egyptian statue of Sekhemka, made of painted limestone. The statue dating to the Old Kingdom, Late Dynasty 5, circa 2400–2300 B.C. was probably from Saqqara in Lower Egypt. It realised a staggering £15,762,500/ $27,001,163/€19,766,175 (estimate: £4,000,000- £6,000,000). This has set a world record price at auction for an ancient Egyptian work of art. The piece was sold off from a regional English Museum and was “originally acquired by the 2nd Marquess of Northampton during his travels in Egypt in 1849-50. It was given to the Northampton Museum either by the 3rd or 4th Marquess of Northampton prior to 1880.

Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Figure for Landscape (1960) sold for a record-setting £4,170,500 / ($7,085,680) at Christie’s sale of modern British and Irish art in London on Wednesday evening. Hepworth’s previous record was set at the same Christie’s sale in July of last year for Curved Form (Bryher II) (1961), which was sold for £2,413,875 ($3,604,412), according to the artnet Price Database.

The sculpture, which was estimated to fetch £1–2 million, was consigned by Norway’s Kunsthall Stavanger, which is on the brink of closure due to lacking public funds.

A painting by Artemisia Gentileschi achieved €865,000 ($1,179,832) at Sotheby’s in Paris, nearly three times its presale estimate of €200,000–300,000 ($272,000–$408,000), reports Art Daily. The price sets a new world record price for the 17th-century Baroque artist.

The work existence was until recently only documented in an old black and white photograph from the archives of an Italian dealer (see artnet News report). It’s believed the consignor’s family acquired the painting from that dealer at the beginning of the 20th century.

The only surviving example of a legendary stamp that sold for one cent in 1856 has gone under the hammer for $9.5m (£5.6m), setting a new record for the most expensive stamp sold at auction and the most valuable object by weight and size.

Sotheby's sale of the British Guiana one-cent magenta postage stamp reinforces its reputation as the world's most famous and valuable.

Recently owned by an American millionaire who died four years ago in a prison cell, the stamp was one of an emergency printing of several denominations by the local Official Gazette newspaper in British Guiana in 1856, when storms delayed a shipment from the UK and the postmaster was in danger of entirely running out of stamps.

A Gouro mask from Côte d’Ivoire, which was once owned by French surrealist writer and poet André Breton, sold for more than a million euros on Wednesday, making a new record for a Gouro mask. The mask, one of the favorites of the famous poet, was sold at Paris’ Drouot for €1,375,000 ($1,865,710), 10 times its presale estimate of €100,000-150,000.