Displaying items by tag: Auction

Sotheby's forthcoming London Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 3^rd February 2015 will be led by an exceptionally rare and important view of Venice by Claude Monet, "Le Grand Canal" of 1908, estimated at £20-30 million /$30.6 -45.9m / €25.6-38.3m.

Helena Newman, Sotheby’s Co-Head, Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide, said: “The market for works by Claude Monet has now reached an all-time point of strength, with bidders coming from four times as many countries as a decade ago."

In addition to a  legacy of classic films from Hollywood’s heyday, when the iconic actress Lauren Bacall passed away in August 2014, she left behind a stunning and thoughtfully assembled art collection. A selection of these works will be offered at Bonhams in New York on March 31, 2015, and April 1, 2015. “The Lauren Bacall Collection,” which includes paintings, sculpture, furniture, jewelry, and tribal art, is expected to fetch approximately $3 million.

Prior to the sale in New York, highlights from Bacall’s collection will embark on an international tour, making stops at Bonhams’ locations in Hong Kong (January 14-19, 2015), Paris (January 29-February 3, 2015),  London (February 16-19, 2015), and Los Angeles (February 27-March 6, 2015). The works will also go on view at the Grand Palais in Paris (February 4-6, 2015) and Bonhams New York (March 25-30, 2015).

Christie’s announces the sale of two Italian private collections, the first from the Rome apartment of Principessa Ismene Chigi Della Rovere and the second from the palazzo of a Noble Genoese Family. Comprising over 225 lots this diverse sale offers collectors and decorators a wonderful insight into 20th century Italian style and glamour, presenting a rich and varied selection of Old Master pictures and decorative objects from around the world, which range from 18th century Italian and French furniture and Art Nouveau glass, to Chinese and Japanese works of art. Estimates range from £500 to £25,000 and the pre-sale viewing will be at Christie’s 85 Old Brompton Road from January 31 to February 3. The auction will be held on February 4, 2015 at Christie’s South Kensington and provides an opportunity to acquire exceptional antiques and works of art from two noble Italian families.

Andy Warhol was the top-selling artist at auction in the past year as increased competition for the most-expensive segment of the market drove global art sales higher.

Collectors bought 1,295 works by the deceased artist totaling $653.2 million, ahead of sales for Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, according to preliminary figures by New York-based researcher Artnet. Auctions worldwide rose 10 percent to $16 billion.

Art sales have more than doubled from $6.3 billion in 2009, as surging financial markets lifted the fortunes of the world’s richest.

Christie's New York has announced that it will auction an extraordinarily rare, early Caravaggio entitled "Boy Peeling a Fruit" (1591) on January 28, as part of Old Masters Week, Art Daily reports.

The masterpiece, which depicts a young boy sitting at a table peeling an orange, has a pre-sale estimate of $3 to $5 million. "Boy Peeling a Fruit" is considered to be one of the earliest known paintings by Caravaggio, and it displays the artist's signature use of dramatic lighting contrasts.

Bonhams Oxford will offer on March 7 a privately owned collection of 30 Victorian carriages and coaches as part of its Carriage Collection Sale, including  two beautifully designed 18th century sleds.

Sourced from the private collection of a European industrialist, the auction will offer an ex-Royal British Mews 1835 Traveling Landau Coach (estimated at £200,000-300,000), an ornate black hearse valued at estimated £5,000 - 8,000 and an 18th century Amsterdam Sled, estimated at £4,000-6,000.

One of the late sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani's final purchases is catching up with him, as members of Qatar's ruling family are now being sued for some $7.5 million that the collector's estate still owes for a set of rare stamps he won at auction before his death.

Known as the “British Guiana collection," the stamps, from the estate of John E. du Pont, were offered by David Feldman Stamp Auctions in June. Though the price may seem extravagant, it was not even the most expensive stamp auction of that month: a 19th-century one-cent magenta, also from the du Pont estate by way of British colonial Guiana, fetched an astronomical $9.5 from an anonymous buyer at Sotheby's New York, smashing the record for a single stamp.

“175 Masterworks To Celebrate 175 Years of Photography: Property from Joy of Giving Something Foundation" auction held at Sotheby's New York on December 11th and 12th, broke the world record for a photography auction. The sale was drawn from a collection gathered by the late American financier Howard Stein. The auction grossed the grand sum of $21,325,063, or £13,591,629 - beating its presale estimate of $13–20 million, or £8.2 - £12.7 million. The sale greatly surpassed the previous record, set in 2006 by a Sotheby's sale of photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which reached the total of $15 million, or £9.5 million.

The auction also set a number of artist's records. The top lot, an impressionistic view of Venice by Alvin Langdon Coburn ("Shadows and Reflections, Venice," 1905) fetched the staggering sum of $965,000, or £614,726.

Sotheby’s January 2015 Old Master Week in New York will feature a select group of highly important paintings assembled by noted collector J.E. Safra. The choice offering of 17 paintings presents a wide range of styles and genres of the period including the Dutch Golden Age, as well as 18th century Italian and French. The vast majority of the works have been off the market for at least 20 years and together the group is estimated to bring $22/34 million. The paintings will go on public exhibition, alongside Sotheby’s Old Master Week sales, beginning January 24.

Leading a very strong group of Dutch works to be offered in Sotheby’s January 2015 sales is "Frozen River at Sunset," painted by Aert van der Neer in or shortly after 1660, a period that was a high point for Dutch landscape painting and for the artist himself (est. $4/6 million).

Paul Cézanne's painting "Vue sur L'Estaque et Le Château d'If" (1883–1885) will go under the hammer at Christie's London in February 2015. The painting has been in the private collection of British magnate Samuel Courtauld since he purchased the work in 1936.

“The sun here is so terrific that objects appear silhouetted not only in white or black, but in blue, red, brown, violet,” Cézanne wrote in a letter to his friend Camille Pissarro in 1876. The artist's planes of colour prefigured Cubism, and the view of pines and the Mediterranean sea beyond red roof tiles of Estaque, a fishing port near Marseille, was a recurrent theme in the Cézanne's work.