Fall print sales post healthy results: estimates were exceeded, most prints found buyers but few records were set at the major autumn print auctions in New York

Art Business News, Jan, 2004 by Barden Prisant

This season, Sotheby's put more troops in the field and vanquished Christie's by sheer force of numbers.

On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2003, Sotheby's offered no fewer than 837 lots--a bold move in light of the political and economic uncertainties of recent months. Yet, confounding all skeptics, the auction house sold 90 percent of the lots on offer. This is a very strong result, even in the best of times, and it pushed its gross for the sale to a healthy $7.8 million. Eight of the top 10 lots sold at or beyond the high end of their estimates, implying that there was definite enthusiasm among the bidders. In the words of Mary Bartow, director of Sotheby's prints department, "We are extremely pleased with the results of our sale, which reflect the overall strength and depth of the print market."

The success of Sotheby's sale may have been partially due to the lavishness of its catalog. In a number of instances, half- and full-page entries were granted to prints only expected to bring $5,000 or so. Usually, this is an honor reserved for pieces expected to bring five- or six-figure prices. By comparison, the Christie's catalogue routinely crammed three or more images onto each page, making it appear far less opulent.

The Sotheby's sale got off to a roaring start when 127 of its first 129 lots found buyers. This group consisted of prints by James Abbott McNeill Whistler from the collection of the late Louis B. Dailey. Dailey, an attorney and champion tennis player, had concentrated on purchasing high-quality impressions in very good condition. Ultimately, he amassed what Sotheby's described as "one of the largest collections of Whistlers in private hands." Thus, this sale represented a rare opportunity for collectors, and they spent no less than $860,000 on his prints.

Another noteworthy, though less lucrative, single-owner consignment was that of Rosemary Primont Okun. Okun was a night student at the Cooper Union art school in New York from 1949 to 1951, and, years later, she decided to donate several prints--one Jasper Johns, two Robert Rauschenbergs and one Joan Miro--to her alma mater. The four fetched more than $130,000, generating much-needed funds for an institution which has been pleading poverty in recent years.

The Christie's prints auction lost the numbers game this season. Its one-day sale held on Nov. 4 offered only 379 lots, grossing a total of $4.8 million. Eighty-five percent of the items on offer sold, but the auction house's problem was not having more items to sell.

Of course, as Christie's has been quick to point out, it trounced Sothehy's last spring, when it sold prints worth more than $10 million. Therefore, Christie's has been trumpeting that it bested Sotheby's for the year 2003. Nevertheless, it finished the year with a whimper, not a bang.

American participation in the Christies sale proved to be a double-edged sword. While nine of the top 10 lots at the sale were purchased by American dealers and collectors, a number of pieces made by American printmakers fell flat. In particular, two major drypoints by Mary Cassatt, which had been expected to fetch as much as $220,000 total, failed to find buyers. Furthermore, one of Winslow Homer's few original prints, "Eight Bells," (est.: $50,000 to $70,000) also failed to find a buyer.

Like Sotheby's, Christie's also boasted a significant single-owner consignment. The St. Louis Art Museum had consigned 50 prints by the artist Max Beckmann, the proceeds of which were to benefit the museum's acquisitions fired. Although the artist is best known for his early European work, in the last years before he died, he moved to St. Louis where he taught at the Washington University School of Fine Arts. In the end, it seemed that the pieces the museum had consigned to Christie's were not quite as desirable as the Whistler prints, which Dailey had consigned to Sotheby's; 88 percent of the Beckmann's found buyers versus 98 percent of the Whistler's. Still, the more than $400,000 they grossed accounted for almost 10 percent of the Christie's sale total.

There is one last notable addendum to Christie's print season. On Nov. 11 and 12, Christie's sold the collection of Dorothy C. Miller, one of the first curators of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Although the headlines focused on her Jasper Johns painting "Gray Numbers," which fetched more than $5 million, another Jasper Johns print in her collection, "False Start I," fetched $65,725. In all, the prints from her collection garnered just more than $250,000, which should be added to the Christie's season total.

In conclusion, when the two big houses do battle next, it will be interesting to see if Christie's brings more troops.

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