Van Gogh Fires Up Fall Auctions - statistics for auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's - Abstract

Art in America, Jan, 1999 by David Ebony

The overall success of the auction, however, was dampened by the numerous buy-ins and works that fell far short of expectations. Among the evening's most notable casualties was a 1918 Brancusi bronze, The Muse (est. $8 million $10 million), from the collection of the Judith Rothschild Foundation, which was passed after a high bid of $7.6 million.

The so-so results and quiet mood of the Sotheby's sale were echoed at Christie's Impressionist and 19th-century art auction on Nov. 18. Of the 43 lots offered, only 35 found buyers. The evening was not without a few high points, however. Monet's bright canvas Boatmen at Argenteuil (1874) sold for $9 million, above the $8-million high estimate. A Vuillard interior scene, Conversation (Terra Cotta Pot), 1895, sold for $4.7 million (est. $4.5-6.5 million); and Paul Signac's 1891 canvas Concarneau, Morning Calm, Opus 219 (Larghetto) garnered $4.4 million, above the $3.5 million high estimate, and a new auction record for the artist.

By the time Christie's evening sale of 20th-century art rolled around the next night, no one could have counted on a blockbuster auction, but that's exactly what the auction house delivered. The evening total was a whopping $166.7 million, far above the $134.3 million presale high estimate, with 59 of the 68 lots offered sold. A sizable portion of the sale total was generated by a 19th-century painting: van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist without a Beard (1889), the artist's last self-portrait, which he painted for his mother. Offered for sale by the heirs of former BMW chairman Jacques Koerfer, the small canvas (approximately 16 by 13 inches) sold to an anonymous bidder for $71.5 million, the third highest price ever paid for an art work sold at auction. For many, the price signals a full recovery of the art market, since it is the highest sum garnered by any art work since the market's collapse in 1990.

While the van Gogh painting dominated the sale, the evening yielded other important successes, notably, a group of 17 lots from the estate of Harry Torczyner, Magritte's friend and lawyer. Several of the Belgian artist's best-known images were included, such as Personal Values (1942), a canvas featuring a giant comb resting on a bed, which sold for $7.2 million (est. $2.5 million $3.5 million) to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (yet another example of that institution's ambitious new acquisitions program), establishing a new auction record for the artist. Magritte's The Fighter's Grave (1960), a painting of a room filled with a single red rose, brought $5.7 million, above its $2 million high estimate; and the artist's Son of Man (1964), an image of a man in a gray frock coat and a bowler hat with a green apple suspended in front of his face, sold for $5.4 million (est. $2.5 million $3.5 million).