Displaying items by tag: impressionist and modern art evening sale

Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale took place on June 18, 2013 in London. The sale garnered $100.4 million and sold 84% by lot and 87% by value. The top lot of the night was Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) Studie zu Improvisation 3 (1909), which sold for $21.1 million, a few million shy of its $24.7 million high estimate. The painting is from the artist’s renowned “Improvisation” series, which signaled his transition into abstraction. Many of Kandinsky’s works from this period reside in museum collections.

Other highlights from the sale include Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) portrait of the art dealer Paul Guillame (1916), which brought $10.6 million; Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Femme assise dans un fauteuil (1960), which sold for $9.5 million; Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) landscape painting Sainte-Adresse (1873), which garnered $4.4 million; and Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) iconic marble sculpture Eve après le péché (1900-1915), which earned $4.4 million. Records were set for Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Eugène Boudin (1824-1898).

Jay Vincze, International Director and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s London, said, “There was great depth of bidding on works of high quality at all price levels, with strong participation from many new and existing collectors from both traditional and growth markets.”

Sotheby’s will present three early bronzes from Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) pivotal The Gates of Hell at its Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 7, 2013 in New York. The three casts are part of a renowned private collection and include a rare, early cast of The Thinker (1906), which is expected to garner anywhere from $8 million to $12 million.

The cast of The Thinker was made by the Alexis Rudier foundry in Paris and was commissioned directly from the artist by the publishing tycoon, Ralph Pulitzer. The sculpture features a plaque stating that it was made for Pulitzer under Rodin’s immediate supervision. The other casts included in the Impressionist and Modern Art auction are Rodin’s beloved The Kiss (1909) and Ugolino and His Children (1883), which was only cast three times during Rodin’s lifetime.

The Directorate of Fine Arts commissioned The Gates of Hell, which was inspired by Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, in 1880. The project was originally expected to take five years but Rodin spent 37 years working intermittently on what would become the defining sculpture of his career. While The Gates of Hell was never fully realized, many of Rodin’s most notable sculptures are related to the single and multi-figure works he created for the commission.