Displaying items by tag: Christie's

A 20-karat-gold Vacheron Constantin from the collection of U.S. car manufacturer James Ward Packard (1863-1928) sold for almost $1.8 million at Christie’s International in New York today, more than triple the presale high estimate.

The 1919 watch, one of four Packard timepieces put up for auction in Christie’s Important Watches sale, features his signature Art Nouveau monogram in blue enamel and strikes every quarter hour.

The four watches, which had been stores for 60 years in a bank vault, brought in a total of $2.75 million, compared with the presale high estimate of $906,000.

Christie’s International set a record of HK$3.65 billion ($470 million) for a series of Hong Kong auctions last night as Chinese bidders battled for items from their heritage. The figure would have been higher had an 18th- century Chinese vase valued at HK$200 million sold.

The six-day event was estimated to raise HK$2.4 billion from the sale of fine wines, gems, watches, Chinese ceramics, classical paintings and Asian contemporary art. The figure beat the HK$3.49 billion at Sotheby’s (BID) in April -- where some lots achieved prices there were multiples of estimates and others failed to sell -- and Christie’s equivalent sale last year, which made HK$2.29 billion.

“A lot of coal miners and listed company owners and financiers have built wealth and are comfortable spending it on art,” Qian Weipeng, a Shanghai-based dealer, said in an interview at the sale.

Chinese bidding was more intense than ever, especially for porcelain, said dealers. The Chinese antiques trade has an annual value of more than $10 billion. The country overtook the U.S. as the biggest auction market for fine art last year, research company Artprice said.

More than 1 million millionaires live in China, up from 190,000 six years earlier, their ranks swollen last year by economic growth, savings and a strengthening currency, according to a Boston Consulting Group survey. That puts China in third place for millionaire households, behind the 5.22 million in the U.S. and Japan’s 1.53 million.

Still, China’s wealth was not enough to push prices high enough for the Qianlong vase, the most anticipated and expensive lot of the entire sale.

Pierced Decoration
The 15 inch (38.1 cm) vase is lantern-shaped, with scrolling hibiscus flowers on a yellow background. The inner vase serves as the pivot around which the outside vase revolves, allowing different interior scenes to be viewed through four pierced circular panels.

It has the same pierced decoration as the 18th-century Imperial vase that was bid to 51.6 million pounds ($83.2 million) -- the highest ever for a Chinese artwork -- at Bainbridges, west London, last November.

Bainbridges said in February that it hadn’t received payment. It has since refused to comment. Mindful of such reports, Christie’s introduced for the first time the requirement that bidders pay a deposit of HK$1 million on any items valued at HK$8 million or more.

“It was a very pushy estimate,” Richard Marchant, a London-based dealer, said of the Christie’s vase. While he didn’t bid on the vase, Marchant bought three other pieces.

A sensuous scene in Bali and Andean-inspired landscapes scored artist records at Christie's Latin American sale but demand was weak for works by Fernando Botero while prices soared for lesser-known artists.

Painted in Bali, Mexican Miguel Covarrubias' 1932 "Offering of Fruits for the Temple" fetched $1.02 million in Thursday evening's $16.64 million sale.

He was one of nine artists setting new records, some going for several times previous highs.

"We are very excited at some of the prices achieved by very important Latin American artists who haven't had the market recognition at that level," said Virgilio Garza, Christie's Latin American art chief.

Created during Covarrubias' honeymoon in Bali, the painting shows topless young women in crimson and lime green skirts. Atop their heads are triangular baskets of green fruit.

"This particular work really appeals to a very national audience and Covarrubias is known for those pictures there," said Garza, adding bids came from Indonesia.

"There is whimsy to it, a sense of humor, a joy of life."

During his life, Covarrubias won fame for caricatures of celebrities and politicians in 1930s Vanity Fair, which still sells pricey reproductions of his Greta Garbo cover.

Cuban-born Julio Larraz's 1996 painting "Bingham at Noon" set a record for the artist at auction, going for $326,500. It evokes a movie-like scene set in a desert, with a solitary figure in a dark gray suit and hat surveying a stark landscape, standing aside a light brown tent.

Record prices for South American works stemmed from the brisk bidding by Chilean, Argentine and Brazilian buyers.

Ecuadorean Oswaldo Guayasamin's 1960s oil on wood "Quito en Rojo" went for $314,500. Dominated by a pair of volcanoes, the sweeping view of Ecuador's capital is a palette of lava red, flame orange, mahogany, tea green and saffron yellow.

Peruvian Fernando de Szyszlo's "Paclla Pampa (Campo Desolado)," an abstract landscape featuring red and black, sold for $182,500.

NEW YORK CITY – “The auction market for American art continued its climb back today,” said Christie’s American art chief Eric P. Widing, characterizing the mixed results of the auction house’s May 18 sale of paintings, drawings and sculpture.
 
The morning session at Rockefeller Plaza generated $22.2 million on 88 lots, leaving another 50 lots unsold. The sale was projected to exceed $29 million. Christie’s slightly surpassed its December 2010 sale of American art, which garnered $21.2 million on 96 lots.
 
Westervelt Company
The centerpiece of Christie’s sale was 29 lots consigned by the Westervelt Company, formerly the Gulf Paper Corporation.  The works were assembled over four decades by the noted Alabama collector and retired paper executive Jonathan “Jack” Westervelt Warner, who  started buying Audubon prints in the 1950s and over four decades amassed one of the nation’s finest holdings of American paintings, sculpture, furniture and decorative arts produced between the late 18th century and the early 20th century.  A decade ago, Warner opened the Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art in Tuscaloosa.
 
Predicted to surpass $10 million, the Warner group tallied only $6.7 million including premium. Christie’s passed 16 of the 29 lots, roughly 55 percent. The group represented only a small fraction of Warner’s extensive holdings.
 
“The Westervelt material was terribly overestimated. It just wasn’t competitive,” said one insider, echoing widespread opinion in the trade.
 
“Auction houses often get pushed to be too strong with the estimates. A lot of these works were just average. Most of the things that have sold privately from the Warner collection have been well over $1 million. They have been a whole different level of work.  But Christie’s was successful with the major pieces,” said New York dealer Debra Force, an active participant at Christie’s and again at Sotheby’s the following day.
 
Leading the Westervelt group was William Trost Richard’s “Mackerel Cove, Jamestown, Rhode Island.” Painted in 1894, the panoramic view sold to Caldwell Gallery for $1,650,500 against an estimate of $700/$1,000,000, tripling the record at auction for the artist.
 
“I personally feel that there is no finer Richards,” said Manlius, N.Y., dealer Joe Caldwell. “It is late but great.  Most people think that Richard’s early work is his best but this is an example of how wonderful his painting was later in his career.”
 
A masterpiece from Frederick Carl Frieseke’s Giverny years, “Sunspots,” surpassed estimate to sell to a European buyer for $1,022,500 (est. $800/1,000,000). The circa 1915 oil on canvas depicts a nude in a dappled landscape.
 
Three Bierstadts also performed well.  From the Westervelt group, “Seal Rock, California,” a circa 1872 oil on paper laid down on canvas, made $794,500 (est. $500/700,000). From other consignors, “Rocky Mountain Sheep” fetched $542500 from a European bidder. “The Falls of St. Anthony” made $362,500.
 
Various Owners
“It’s likely to be the largest work I ever sell,” Eric Widing said of Maxfield Parrish’s monumental “North Wall Panel,” which brought the day’s top price, $2,882,500 (est. $2/3,000,000). Commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and consigned by her granddaughter, the 221 ½ inch long oil on canvas frieze of 1928 depicts revelers in renaissance dress against a colonnaded backdrop at twilight.  The mural was originally commissioned by Whitney for her Fifth Avenue apartment but was installed in her studio on Long Island. A subsequent lot, the “Du Pont Mural,” brought $158,500. Christie’s holds four of the top five prices at auction for Parrish.
 
Small in scale, California painter Guy Rose’s oil on canvas landscape “Martin’s Point, Carmel” left the room at $890,500 (est. $350/500,000). The painting once hung in a Greene and Green house in Pasadena that was built for Cordelia Culbertson in 1911.
 
A 1947 oil on canvas self-portrait by Milton Avery left the room at $602,500 (est. $300/500,000). The following day, Sotheby’s auctioned “March Playing the Cello,” an Avery portrait of his daughter, for $1,426,500.
 
John Singer Sargent’s “Ladies in the Shade: Abies” went to Michael Altman Fine Art of New York for $566,600 (est. $500/700,000). Completed in the French Alps, the watercolor and pencil on paper descended in the family of Philadelphian George D. Widener. The same price was paid for Norman Rockwell’s “Milkmaid” (est. $300/500,000), an oil on canvas of 1931.
 
Christie’s passed its cover lot, “Eleanor and Benny,” an Impressionist work by Boston painter Frank W. Benson of his daughter and grandson in the family garden in Maine. The 1916 oil on canvas was estimated at $3/5,000,000.
 
Said Widing, “We saw very nice prices on individual lots but we had hoped to see more things selling, and selling well. The American market has historically been the last to pull out of recession because, unlike Impressionist and Modern art, it is almost entirely domestic. If the art-market recession of the 1990s is any guide, we are about half way through this one.”

Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium.
 
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

NEW YORK CITY – “The auction market for American art continued its climb back today,” said Christie’s American art chief Eric P. Widing, characterizing the mixed results of the auction house’s May 18 sale of paintings, drawings and sculpture.
 
The morning session at Rockefeller Plaza generated $22.2 million on 88 lots, leaving another 50 lots unsold. The sale was projected to exceed $29 million. Christie’s slightly surpassed its December 2010 sale of American art, which garnered $21.2 million on 96 lots.
 
Westervelt Company
The centerpiece of Christie’s sale was 29 lots consigned by the Westervelt Company, formerly the Gulf Paper Corporation.  The works were assembled over four decades by the noted Alabama collector and retired paper executive Jonathan “Jack” Westervelt Warner, who  started buying Audubon prints in the 1950s and over four decades amassed one of the nation’s finest holdings of American paintings, sculpture, furniture and decorative arts produced between the late 18th century and the early 20th century.  A decade ago, Warner opened the Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art in Tuscaloosa.
 
Predicted to surpass $10 million, the Warner group tallied only $6.7 million including premium. Christie’s passed 16 of the 29 lots, roughly 55 percent. The group represented only a small fraction of Warner’s extensive holdings.
 
“The Westervelt material was terribly overestimated. It just wasn’t competitive,” said one insider, echoing widespread opinion in the trade.
 
“Auction houses often get pushed to be too strong with the estimates. A lot of these works were just average. Most of the things that have sold privately from the Warner collection have been well over $1 million. They have been a whole different level of work.  But Christie’s was successful with the major pieces,” said New York dealer Debra Force, an active participant at Christie’s and again at Sotheby’s the following day.
 
Leading the Westervelt group was William Trost Richard’s “Mackerel Cove, Jamestown, Rhode Island.” Painted in 1894, the panoramic view sold to Caldwell Gallery for $1,650,500 against an estimate of $700/$1,000,000, tripling the record at auction for the artist.
 
“I personally feel that there is no finer Richards,” said Manlius, N.Y., dealer Joe Caldwell. “It is late but great.  Most people think that Richard’s early work is his best but this is an example of how wonderful his painting was later in his career.”
 
A masterpiece from Frederick Carl Frieseke’s Giverny years, “Sunspots,” surpassed estimate to sell to a European buyer for $1,022,500 (est. $800/1,000,000). The circa 1915 oil on canvas depicts a nude in a dappled landscape.
 
Three Bierstadts also performed well.  From the Westervelt group, “Seal Rock, California,” a circa 1872 oil on paper laid down on canvas, made $794,500 (est. $500/700,000). From other consignors, “Rocky Mountain Sheep” fetched $542500 from a European bidder. “The Falls of St. Anthony” made $362,500.
 
Various Owners
“It’s likely to be the largest work I ever sell,” Eric Widing said of Maxfield Parrish’s monumental “North Wall Panel,” which brought the day’s top price, $2,882,500 (est. $2/3,000,000). Commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and consigned by her granddaughter, the 221 ½ inch long oil on canvas frieze of 1928 depicts revelers in renaissance dress against a colonnaded backdrop at twilight.  The mural was originally commissioned by Whitney for her Fifth Avenue apartment but was installed in her studio on Long Island. A subsequent lot, the “Du Pont Mural,” brought $158,500. Christie’s holds four of the top five prices at auction for Parrish.
 
Small in scale, California painter Guy Rose’s oil on canvas landscape “Martin’s Point, Carmel” left the room at $890,500 (est. $350/500,000). The painting once hung in a Greene and Green house in Pasadena that was built for Cordelia Culbertson in 1911.
 
A 1947 oil on canvas self-portrait by Milton Avery left the room at $602,500 (est. $300/500,000). The following day, Sotheby’s auctioned “March Playing the Cello,” an Avery portrait of his daughter, for $1,426,500.
 
John Singer Sargent’s “Ladies in the Shade: Abies” went to Michael Altman Fine Art of New York for $566,600 (est. $500/700,000). Completed in the French Alps, the watercolor and pencil on paper descended in the family of Philadelphian George D. Widener. The same price was paid for Norman Rockwell’s “Milkmaid” (est. $300/500,000), an oil on canvas of 1931.
 
Christie’s passed its cover lot, “Eleanor and Benny,” an Impressionist work by Boston painter Frank W. Benson of his daughter and grandson in the family garden in Maine. The 1916 oil on canvas was estimated at $3/5,000,000.
 
Said Widing, “We saw very nice prices on individual lots but we had hoped to see more things selling, and selling well. The American market has historically been the last to pull out of recession because, unlike Impressionist and Modern art, it is almost entirely domestic. If the art-market recession of the 1990s is any guide, we are about half way through this one.”

Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium.
 
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Christie’s is pleased to announce further details of its upcoming auction of Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture on 18 May 2011, at 10 am. A total of 138 lots will be offered, featuring outstanding works drawn from a cross-section of styles and genres, including Hudson River School, American Impressionism, Regionalism, Modernism, and Western Art. The sale is expected to achieve in excess of $29 million total.

Christie’s previously announced that the upcoming sale would include the Westervelt Company Collection (see dedicated press release), widely recognized as one of the best assemblages of 19th and 20th century American art in private hands. Amassed over four decades by Jonathan (Jack) Westervelt Warner, the former chief executive of Gulf States Paper Corporation (now the Westervelt Company), the selection includes masterworks by the leading American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Albert  Bierstadt, William Trost Richards, Childe Hassam, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Marsden Hartley, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Ephraim Burchfield, and Andrew Wyeth, among others. The complete group of 29 Westervelt works is estimated to achieve in excess of US$ 10 million.  
   
A lead highlight of the main portion of the sale is Frank Weston Benson’s Eleanor and Benny (estimate: $3-5 million), an important example of the artist’s highly personal style of American Impressionism. As a leader of the Boston School, Benson was one of the first American artists to introduce figures into Impressionist landscapes, creating a new style of painting that remains among the most beloved genres of early 20th century American art. Painted in 1916, at the height of Benson’s talents, Eleanor and Benny is a tender portrayal of the artist’s daughter and grandson sharing the crisp summer light at the family compound in Maine.  With its refined subject matter and sensitive execution, this superb, large-format painting brilliantly captures the aesthetic of the Boston School and recalls in both subject and style the major masterpieces of Benson’s early career. Offered from a distinguished private collection, Eleanor and Benny was last exhibited publicly more than 15 years ago and has been requested for inclusion in a major museum exhibition in 2012.

Originally commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney for her Fifth Avenue mansion, Parrish’s 18-foot wide North Wall Panel is among the largest American paintings ever offered at Christie’s New York. This fanciful panorama employs a myriad of brilliant hues and patterns to create a captivating and complex multi-figural scene that blends pre-Raphaelite sentiment, Old Master technique and a playful sense of wonder, as though offering a view into an imaginary world. As was his practice, Parrish employed family and friends to serve as models for his works, and the North Wall Panel includes many recognizable faces, including his own and that of his wife’s. In total, Parrish produced four murals for Ms. Whitney, who installed them in her sculpture studio in Old Westbury, Long Island. North Wall Panel is offered from the personal collection of Ms. Whitney’s granddaughter, Pamela LeBoutillier of Old Westbury. To listen to an audio feature describing this mural, click here:  http://tinyurl.com/parrish-audio

A founder of the Taos Society of Artists, Couse sketched Indian subjects from his earliest days as an artist. Impressively scaled at nearly four feet wide, The Love Call exhibits the finest aspects of Couse’s work, portraying an intimate scene of a man serenading a woman in a clearing in the woods.  Depicted with the dignity and quiet spirituality that the artist most appreciated in his subjects, the two Native American figures are portrayed with remarkable attention to detail and accuracy of form, while retaining the romantic and mystical qualities that are the hallmarks of Couse’s style.

Renowned for his portraits, Sargent’s most innovative works were completed outside his studio, during his travels to the European countryside when he felt most inspired and at ease.  During his stays in the Alps in the summers of 1900 to 1914, Sargent produced a body of watercolors celebrated for their freedom, intimacy and modernity.  Painted during his August 1912 visit to the resort of Abriès in the French Alps, Ladies in the Shade is exemplary of Sargent’s work from this period and demonstrates the artist at the height of his abilities. This work was originally offered for sale in 1925 at Christie’s London as part of the sale of the artist’s estate and studio. It was purchased by the Widener family of Philadelphia and has descended within the family collection since. To listen to an audio feature describing this mural, click here: http://tinyurl.com/sargent-audio

Albert Bierstadt's paintings of the untamed American West are some of the most significant historical and artistic accomplishments of the 19th century. While other artists had made expeditions throughout the area as early as the 1830s, few could rival Bierstadt in his ability to convey the grandeur of this wondrous region to the American public.  Painted circa 1887, The Falls of Saint Anthony depicts the only natural major waterfall on the Upper Mississippi River. Before European exploration, the falls held cultural and political significance for native tribes who frequented the area. The Dakota Indians associated the falls with legends and spirits, including Oanktehi, god of waters and evil, who lived beneath the falling water. Filled with vivid light and dramatic elements, the painting embodies Bierstadt's powerful vision of the pristine, unspoiled Western landscape.

The complete e-catalogue for this sale is available online at
http://www.christies.com/eCatalogues/index.aspx?saleid=23053

Christie’s International sold $156 million of Impressionist and modern art last night in New York, less than half the year-ago total, as collectors and advisers lamented a scarcity of masterpieces.

“This time around, the auction houses don’t have any great estates,” said Suzanne Gyorgy, head of Citi Private Bank’s art advisory service, before the sale. “They don’t have the iconic great work.”

The tally fell below Christie’s presale estimate of $162.3 million to $231.9 million, with 10 of the 57 lots failing to sell. Leonardo DiCaprio, sitting near the front of the room with a baseball cap obscuring his face, was among the onlookers as Claude Monet’s 1914-17 floral painting “Iris mauves” failed to sell.

Estimated to fetch as much as $20 million, it was the sale’s biggest casualty. DiCaprio declined to comment.

The top lot was a tie. A Maurice de Vlaminck landscape owned by hedge-fund manager Steve Cohen fetched a record $22.5 million, as did Monet’s 1891 painting of poplars, “Les Peupliers.”

The 1905 Vlaminck canvas, “Paysage de banlieue,” is a view of the small town of Chatou in the suburbs of Paris. Yet its palette of bright yellow and deep blue seems more Mediterranean.

“For Vlaminck it’s a pretty key composition,” said Michael Findlay, director at Acquavella Galleries in New York, before the sale. “It couldn’t be a better date, it couldn’t be better colors.”

The seller bought the work from Acquavella in 2002 and according to Christie’s, Acquavella bought it back last night.

Records in 2010

In May 2010, Christie’s achieved records for Picasso and Jasper Johns while auctioning the estates of Frances Brody and Michael Crichton. Its Impressionist and modern sale was a $335.5 million spectacle starring a 1932 Picasso that went for $106.5 million.