Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art sale last night beat the company’s top estimate as sellers including Conde Nast chief S. I. Newhouse Jr. and investor Louis Reijtenbagh unloaded Giacomettis, Picassos and Renoirs.
The $181.8 million auction was Sotheby’s first evening Impressionist sale in New York in 3 ½ years to beat its high estimate ($163.6 million), the publicly traded auctioneer said. The tally was nearly triple Christie’s International’s Nov. 3 result and Sotheby’s equivalent sale in May, when its top two lots failed to sell in the wake of the financial crisis. All but 10 of the 66 artworks sold.
“Panic is out,” said New York dealer Helly Nahmad. “The market is back.”
The two-hour sale contrasted with the hour-long, 40-lot auction at Christie’s the night before, which missed its low estimate because of a dearth of high-quality works, dealers said.
“People are not blind,” said Montreal-based dealer Robert Landau. “People were bidding on the good stuff.”
As real estate investor Fred Elghanayan and jeweler Laurence Graff looked on, auctioneer Tobias Meyer kept up a brisk pace, employing aerobic arm gestures to accept bids from around the room. He said the auction was the most active Impressionist and modern sale he’s presided over.
Collectors were back “after a year of abstinence,” Meyer told the press.
Falling Man
The evening’s top lot was Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture “L’Homme Qui Chavire” (Falling Man), sold by Newhouse. The slim two-foot-tall figure of a man stumbling in space, created in 1950-51, fetched $19.3 million, above the $12 million high estimate.
It is from an edition of six. Another version sold for $18.5 million at Christie’s in May 2007, at the peak of the art market boom.
“There was an air of confidence in the room,” said Sandy Heller, a New York art consultant who advises hedge fund managers.
Picasso’s six-foot tall painting of a man in a jaunty yellow hat seated in an armchair — the 1969 “Buste D’Homme” – - fetched $10.4 million. Painted just five years before the artist’s death, it was estimated to sell for up to $12 million.
Andre Derain’s 1905 wildly colored waterscape, “Barques au port de Collioure” set an auction record for the artist, at $14.1 million. The winning bidder was Guy Bennett, former head of Christie’s New York Impressionist department, who cupped a phone to his ear as he bid.
Bank Collateral
More than a third of lots came from Reijtenbagh, a Dutch doctor-turned-investor who settled legal disputes over loans with three banks earlier this year; he sold 22 artworks for $58.5 million.
Some of works had previously been pledged as collateral for loans with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and ABM Amro Bank NV, according to the banks. The works are listed in the auction catalog as “Property from an Important European Private Collection.”
Reijtenbagh, with homes in New York, Monaco and Belgium, watched the sale from a darkened skybox, accompanied by his family. He sipped white wine as his collection found plenty of competition among bidders.
A Matisse-like 1910 Kees van Dongen painting “Jeune Arabe,” with a swaggering tangerine-toned man, was his most coveted work. The painting fetched $13.8 million from an anonymous phone bidder, topping the $10 million estimate and setting a record for the artist.
Smaller Sale
While Sotheby’s sale bested rival Christie’s this week, the auction was smaller than its $269.7 million sale in November 2007, when 10 lots sold for more than $10 million each. Last night five lots surpassed $10 million.
Modern art wasn’t the only material in demand. The heirs of famed Impressionist art merchant Paul Durand-Ruel, who died in 1922, sold paintings by Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, raking in $18.9 million.
One of the artist’s great-grandsons, private dealer Lionel Pissarro, placed the winning bid on a $7 million 1898 Pissarro of an industrial landscape “Le Pont Boieldieu et la Gare d’Orleans, Rouen, Soleil,” with puffy clouds and polluting smokestacks.
Estimates do not include commissions, which are 25 percent on the first $50,000, 20 percent between $50,000 and $1 million, and 12 percent above $1 million.
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