News from Sotheby's in London: Global Bidding at Sotheby's Drives Total to Above-Estimate £105.9m/ $165.9m
Wednesday June 19, 2013, Sotheby’s London Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art totalled £105,939,000/$165,932,256 / €123,789,394, exceeding its pre-sale high estimate of £74-104 million. Driven largely by the strength of the diverse offerings – fresh-to-the-market estate property, sculpture, and classic Impressionist works – the sale attracted global competition.
The top lot of this sale – and of the London summer season - was Monet’s 1908 view of Venice, Le Palais Contarini, which sold in a tense three-way bidding battle for £19,682,500 / $30,828,700/€22,998,940.
The sale was characterised by broad participation from bidders across 33 different countries on the telephones, in the saleroom and online, and saw a record number of participants from Asia in a London Impressionist sale. Four auction records were established and the sale was 81.7% sold by lot.
Property from estate collections accounted for half of the lots offered this evening - The Analytical Eye: The Branco Weiss Collection and the Collection of The Late Stanley J. Seeger. Testimony to the enduring appeal of great fresh-to-the-market property from distinguished private collections, works were sought after by multiple bidders in almost every case.
A highlight of the sale was a pristine example of a quintessential work by Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue (1927) - his most favoured combination. Fiercely contested by five bidders, it fetched £9,266,500/ $14,514,119 – a price reflecting the rarity of seminal works by the Dutch artist on the market.
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