Displaying items by tag: buyer

Liu Yiqian, a former taxi driver turned billionaire art collector, confirmed on Tuesday that he was the buyer of the painting of a nude woman by Amedeo Modigliani that sold for $170.4 million at Christie’s New York on Monday night.

Speaking by telephone from Shanghai, the Chinese collector said he planned to bring the work back to the city, where he and his wife have two private museums.

The UK culture minister has delayed issuing an export license on Rembrandt’s Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1657), which has been in the UK for over 250 years but was recently sold to a foreign buyer for £35m. The painting is particularly popular with the public because Hooghsaet, a wealthy Amsterdam woman, is shown with her pet parrot—who was named in her will—not her estranged husband.

Earlier this year, the Rembrandt was sold by the Douglas-Pennant family, whose home is Penrhyn Castle, a National Trust mansion in north Wales. The portrait had hung there since 1860.

The Netherlands and Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum intend to buy two rare works by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn, repatriating the 1634 masterpieces after more than a century of ownership by France’s Rothschild family.

Each buyer plans to pay 80 million euros ($90 million), according to the Ministry of Culture. About 50 million euros of the Dutch state’s portion is going to come from dividends paid out from the state’s ownership of companies including ABN Amro Group NV.

The very first eyewitness representation of Niagara Falls, a 1762 topographical watercolor by Thomas Davies, is at risk of being exported from the UK unless a buyer can be found to match the £151,800 asking price.

In order to provide a last chance to keep it in the UK, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has placed a temporary export bar on the watercolor by Captain Thomas Davies, An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara.

The topographical watercolor of Niagara Falls by Captain Thomas Davies provides the very first accurate portrait of this iconic landscape, which has become one of the most recognizable views in the world. It was also the earliest inclusion of Niagara’s ever-present rainbow.

When Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Gertrud Loew-Felsövanyi (1902) sold at Sotheby's London in June for $39 million, many speculated about the buyer's identity.

Now, an investigation conducted by the Austrian daily Der Standard has revealed that the painting was not bought by Ronald Lauder as was previously assumed. The buyer is Joe Lewis, a British billionaire who's made his fortune in foreign exchange market (forex) trading in the early 1990s.

Elaine Wynn and Antony Ressler have been elected as the new board co-chairs of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, officials announced Thursday. They succeed Andrew Brandon-Gordon and Terry Semel, who will remain on the museum board with the title co-chairs emeriti.

Wynn joined LACMA's board of trustees in 2011 and is an active art collector. She was the reported buyer in 2013 of the $142.4 million Francis Bacon triptych painting of Lucian Freud — then a record sum for a painting sold at auction. 

The Pablo Picasso canvas that set a record on May 11 at Christie's for the most expensive work ever sold at auction, at $179.4 million, may have gone to a buyer from Qatar.

Unnamed art world sources are telling the "New York Post" that the buyer of "Femmes d'Alger (Version “O")" (1955), was billionaire former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. Buyers at auction typically maintain their anonymity by bidding via phone; the Picasso was won by an anonymous telephone bidder represented by Brett Gorvy, international head of contemporary art for Christie's.

To a medley of whoops, hollers and gasps on Monday night, Pablo Picasso’s 1955 painting “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” sold for $179.4 million including fees at Christie’s “Looking Forward to the Past” sale of artworks spanning the 20th century. The price was the highest on record for a work of art sold at auction, the company said, and was well over its estimate of $140 million.

Once the bidding reached $120 million, the Picasso was pursued by five clients on telephones, often in agonizingly slow, $1 million increments, before finally being sold to a buyer represented by Brett Gorvy, Christie’s international head of contemporary art.

On a sunny morning in late February, Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer, flew into Nice and drove 20 miles along the French Riviera to Monaco to meet his top client, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Bouvier had come to work out the final payment for Mark Rothko’s No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red), which Rybolovlev had agreed to buy for €140 million back in August. Bouvier, 51, entered the lobby of the cream-colored, belle époque mansion where Rybolovlev’s penthouse apartment overlooks Monte Carlo’s yacht-filled marina.

Assuming business as usual, Bouvier approached a man he thought was one of Rybolovlev’s bodyguards.

Christie’s Magnificent Jewels sale achieved its target of $42.0 million on April 14, led by a fancy pink diamond that fetched $5.8 million, the auction house said.

The 5.29-carat bauble, of an intense purplish pink hue, sold to a buyer identified only as “U.S. trade” and came in at $1.1 million per carat.

Other diamonds fetching high prices included a pear-shaped potentially internally flawless diamond pendant of 25.49 carats, by Graff ($3.4 million) and a circular-cut fancy gray-blue diamond of 5.04 carats ($2.3 million).