Two knowledgeable Christie’s sources (NOT Conor Jordan, above) this morning informed me (on the record but not for attribution by name) that the anonymous $106.48-million purchaser of Picasso‘s portrait of his sleeping paramour, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was NOT the same party who received a financing fee from the auction house for being the third-party guarantor of the coveted painting.
That means that the jaw-dropping new record for any artwork sold at auction is a clean one. Had the guarantor been the purchaser, the price paid would have been, in essence, discounted by the (undisclosed) amount of his fee. The hammer price for “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” 1932 (seen in the above photo), was $95 million, compared to a presale estimate of $70-90 million.
Thanks in large measure to the megabucks competition for the Picasso, last night’s 69-lot Impressionist/modern sale (three lots withdrawn before the auction) fetched a hammer total of $296.55 million, compared to a presale estimate of $262.78 to $368.3 million. (The sale total including buyer’s premium, which does not figure in the presale estimates, was $335.55 million.)
The 27 works offered from the collection of the late Frances Brody (which included the star Picasso) were 100% sold, for a total of $224.18 million, including premium.
But it was a very different story for the non-Brody part of the sale: The sold rate for the various-owner conglomeration was a mere 67% by value, 69% by lot—a result that can only be called dismal. Only 29 of the 42 lots sold. The name of the game, it appears, is finding prestigious single-owner collections to sell.
At next week’s big contemporary sales, the name is Crichton—also at Christie’s. But unlike the venerable Brody collection, the late author Michael Crichton‘s trove contains not only long-held art but also a large number of works that he purchased at auction in a 2003-2004 buying spree. If nothing else, that could provide a good baseline from which to assess the current state of the contemporary art market.
For the complete results of last night’s sale, go here for Brody; here for various owners.