Displaying items by tag: Auction

British rock legend Eric Clapton is selling Cy Twombly's "Crimes of Passion I" (1960). The painting will go under the hammer next week during Sotheby's London Contemporary Art Evening Auction, and comes with a presale estimate of £4-6 million.

Clapton hasn't hold on to the Twombly masterpiece for long. The guitar hero purchased it in November 2012 at Sotheby's New York—but then again, it looks like Clapton has become a very astute market player.

Five paintings by French impressionist Claude Monet, including his famous 1908 "Le Grand Canal" view of Venice, sold for a total of $84 million (73 million euros) in a London auction on Tuesday.

"Le Grand Canal", a hazy blue-and-green view of the banks of the Italian city painted at the peak of Monet's career, sold for $35.6 million (31.4 million euros).

It was part of a Sotheby's auction of impressionist and modern art works including paintings by masters Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse, and sculptures by Auguste Rodin.

Three of Andy Warhol's most iconic portraits from the 1980s will go to auction at Bonhams in London on February 12 at the Post-War & Contemporary Art sale. Each depicts a person that was a close friend of the artist as well as an important figure of the decade: socialite Marjorie Copley, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

"Portrait of Marjorie Copley" (1980), an icy, demure departure from the bright Pop colors that largely dominated Warhol's work during this period, has been given an estimate of £180,000–£250,000 ($271,743–$377,421).

Jeffrey S. Evans & Associate's upcoming sale will feature the lighting and early glass collection of Pat and the late Bret Morey of Griswold, CT and part one of the Victorian glass collection of Robert E. Hefner Jr. of Rosharon, TX. Highlights include extremely rare fluid and early kerosene lighting of all types; rare colored Sandwich glass; fine Tiffany, Steuben, Durand, Loetz, and Mt. Washington art glass; and a large selection of Victorian opalescent glass.

The auction will take place on Saturday, January 31, 2015 at 9:30 a.m. ET. For more information, please visit www.jeffreysevans.com.

Many in the crowd of dealers, collectors, and onlookers attending Sotheby's main sale of Old Master paintings on Thursday January 29 remarked on the difference that a single day made when contrasting the sale with the dismal results at Christie's Old Masters sale the day before (see: Canaletto, Caravaggio Fail to Sell at Christie's Worst Old Masters Sale Since 2002).

The sale totaled $57 million, as compared with an overall presale estimate of $54–77.6 million. Of 104 lots offered, 73 (or 70 percent) found buyers. The stronger sold-by-value rate, 78 percent, reflected spirited bidding on a few key lots.

The Contemporary Art Evening auction at Phillips on February 12 features works by many art world heavyweights including Andy Warhol, Allen Jones, Julian Schnabel, and Antony Gormley, but the star that is likely to steal the show is undoubtedly Ai Weiwei's sculpture "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads." This group of 12 gold-plated sculptures, portraying the signs of the Chinese zodiac, is offered as Lot 8 with a pre-sale estimate of £2-£3m.

Created in 2010 the zodiac heads are inspired by those which once comprised a water clock-fountain at the Old Summer Palace, the complex of palaces and gardens in Beijing built between 1750 and 1764 by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty.

It’s about to get more expensive to shop at Sotheby’s. The auction house announced late Monday that it was effectively raising the rates it charges many of its buyers by changing the rate thresholds.

The first change in Sotheby’s rate structure in nearly two years means that beginning Feb. 1 buyers at its auctions will pay 25 percent on the first $200,000 of a hammer price, up from a previous low threshold of $100,000; 20 percent on the value between $200,000 and $3 million, up from the previous range of $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent on any amount remaining above $3 million, up from the previous upper threshold of $2 million.

Claude Monet's acclaimed work "L’Embarcadère," 1871, is to be offered at Sotheby’s forthcoming London Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 3 February 2015. The Dutch landscape by Claude Monet is appearing on the market for the first time in a quarter of a century. The painting has been internationally exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and provides the perfect embodiment of the evolution of Impressionism. "L’Embarcadère" was painted by Monet in Zaandam in Holland, where the artist lived with his family for four months over the summer of 1871.

The artist produced a series of 25 works that explored several areas surrounding Zaandam, focussing his attention upon the architectural motifs of the Dutch landscape, canals, mills, and boats. Within a strong compositional framework and in a boldly inventive style, Monet’s use of color and the areas of lively brushwork represent his attempts to evoke the atmosphere of the scene, and Monet includes subtle, but evocative, signifiers of the weather in the full sails of the river-boats, glistening yellow painted houses - and the cool relief of the shaded river-bank.

A bleak self-portrait by the postwar British artist Francis Bacon will lead Sotheby’s upcoming Contemporary Art Evening Sale on February 10, 2015, in London. Two Studies for Self-Portrait (1977) is one of only three diptychs painted by Bacon after the death of his partner, George Dyer. Out of the three, it is the only one ever to be offered at auction. The other double self-portraits remain in private collections.

Another Bacon painting, Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966), dominated last year’s contemporary art auctions in London. Offered by Christie’s, the painting fetched $70 million -- the highest price ever paid at auction for a single panel by the artist.

Sotheby’s announced the auction, on March 18 in Paris, of the private collection of the Dillée family, a renowned Parisian dynasty of specialists and collectors of furniture and works of art. Consisting of 450 lots, the sale will be divided into two sessions, including French decorative arts from the 17th to the 19th centuries, Old Master paintings and drawings, bronzes, scientific objects and Antique arms.

Mario Tavella, Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and Chairman Private Collections, said: “Our auction house is deeply honoured to be entrusted once again with the sale of an iconic collection of works of art, which, in this instance, has been carefully selected by the expert eyes of three generations of the Dillée family. Their Cabinet d’Expertise has seen some of the most beautiful objects go through its doors before being passed onto collectors, auction houses and institutions. We are hoping that the Dillée sale will attract new and old generations of collectors, as well as the notable museums that the Dillée family has dealt with in the past.”