Displaying items by tag: Auction

Sotheby’s continues to build aggressively on its strength in the Impressionist and Modern market announcing today Matisse’s "Odalisque au fauteuil noir," estimated at between £9 and 12m, for its London sale of Impressionist and Modern art. Helena Newman, Sotheby’s Co-Head, Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide, said, “This exquisitely colored painting is one of the finest of the artist’s celebrated ‘Odalisque’ paintings to come to the market.”

An exquisite portrait depicting Princess Nézy-Hamidé Chawkat, the great granddaughter of the last Sultan of Turkey, "Odalisque au fauteuil noir" (dated 1942 and estimated at £9-12m) is one of Henri Matisse’s finest paintings from his famed ‘Odalisque’ series, his depictions of the notorious concubine figure, with which he created one of the most recognizable emblems of eroticism in Modern art.

A 9.75-carat fancy vivid blue diamond from the collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon sold for more than $32.6 million, shattering its high estimate of $15 million at Sotheby’s New York Thursday. The price set a world auction record for any blue diamond; and at more than $3.3 million per carat, it set a world auction record for price-per-carat for any diamond.

The pear-shaped diamond was sought after by seven bidders who competed for 20 minutes for the gem, Sotheby’s said. It ultimately sold to a Hong Kong private collector who named it “The Zoe Diamond.”

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Seth Kaller, one of the world’s leading dealers in rare historic documents, will exhibit and offer for sale George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in conjunction with Leigh Keno, President of Keno Auctions, now through November 26.

The Thanksgiving Proclamation is priced at $8.4 million, and is the only example in private hands. The only other Washington-signed copy was acquired by the Library of Congress in 1921. The document was offered at Christie’s on November 14, 2013, where it was expected to sell for upwards of $12,000,000. Kaller represents the document’s owner, who has decided to offer the manuscript through exhibition and private sale.

One of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower paintings has shattered the auction record for a work by a female artist. On Thursday, November 20, “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” (1932), a commanding painting with an impressive provenance, sold for $44.4 million during Sotheby’s American Art sale in New York. The work, which belonged to the artist’s sister, Anita O’Keeffe Young, and hung in the White House’s private dining room during the George W. Bush administration, was offered for sale by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The Santa Fe-based institution sold the painting, along with two other works by O’Keeffe, to benefit its Acquisitions Fund.

Seven bidders competed for “Jimson Weed,” driving the price to a record height and nearly tripling the work’s high estimate of $15 million.

These days, exhibitions of the American artist Mark Rothko's work are huge crowd-pullers, and his paintings fetch record sums at auction. Now the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag is presenting a new exhibition of Rothko’s work, forty years after the last such show in the Netherlands. This is a unique opportunity to enjoy the artist’s work, as the exhibition is only being held in The Hague - and nowhere else.

With works constructed layer upon shimmering layer; Rothko's color fields are of unparalleled intensity and communicate universal human emotions such as fear, ecstasy, grief and euphoria. The artist was an intensely committed painter who invested his whole being in his art and, like many other great artists, he led a difficult life. Rothko was deeply disillusioned by the two world wars, and plagued by depression, yet capable of producing great art with an enduring capacity to comfort and enthral.

Christie’s auction on Tuesday 2nd December 2014 will be 'Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale', in London; will feature a remarkable portrait by Sir Anthony van Dyck of the musician Hendrick Liberti. The work was in the collection of King Charles I at Whitehall by 1639; the piece has not been seen for almost a century, since its sale at Christie’s by the 8th Duke of Grafton in 1923.

The auction at Christie's will present a selection of 36 high quality works that have been curated with the aim of being new to the market and attractively priced.

Christie’s announced it has been entrusted with the sale of the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, the distinguished American scholar, dealer and collector of Asian Art who passed away in August 2014. Widely recognized throughout Asia and the Americas for his ground-breaking role in the study and appreciation of Asian Art, Mr. Ellsworth was a distinguished connoisseur who opened new arenas of collecting to Western audiences and built a successful business purveying the very finest works of art to his generation’s foremost collectors. His personal collection of over 2,000 items was assembled over a lifetime and widely recognized as the most important grouping of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian sculpture, paintings, furniture and works of art. To celebrate this exceptional collection and the generous and benevolent man behind it, Christie's is organizing free public exhibitions and a special five-day series of auctions and online-only sales to be held during Asian Art Week at Christie's New York in March 2015. A global tour of highlights from the collection kicks off November 21 in Hong Kong, and will continue to stops throughout Asia and Europe prior to the New York sales.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s trademark bicorne hat sold at auction near Paris on Sunday for roughly $2.4 million, according to news reports.

A South Korean collector, whose name was not released, paid nearly five times more than the minimum price set for the two-cornered, black felt hat that was apparently worn by the French emperor during the Battle of Marengo in 1800, the BBC reported.

Jean-Pierre Osenat of the Osenat auction house in Fontainebleau, France said the hat, now weathered from its age, is part of a collection belonging to the Prince of Monaco, whose family is distantly related to Napoleon.

The $1.36 billion auction week of postwar and contemporary evening sales in New York had its low-key finale at Phillips on Thursday, turning in a solid though hardly exceptional $51,964,750. The decent tally fell close to midway between pre-sale expectations of $45,760,000-67,790,000 million, though estimates do not include the buyer’s premium pegged at 25 percent up to an including $100,000, 20 percent up to and including $2 million, and 12 percent for anything above that.

Eight of the 47 lots offered failed to sell for a workmanlike 17 percent buy-in rate by lot.

On Wednesday, November 12, Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York netted a whopping $852.9 million -- the highest-ever total for an auction. Filled with blue-chip works by modern masters, including Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and Gerhard Richter, the sale soared past its estimate, which hovered around $600 million. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Postwar and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, said, “This was a sale of extraordinary quality and range, with every major artist represented by at least one masterwork. The landmark sale result achieved tonight is a reflection of both growing global enthusiasm and demand in this category and a virtuous cycle of confidence in the art market that brings a fresh supply of exciting, high-quality works into the market with each new season.”