Sotheby's Impressionist Evening sale: 5th February 2008 Last night’s sale of Impressionist & Modern Art at Sotheby’s London was the highest totalling sale ever held by the Company in Europe, realising £116,699,900 ($230,517,312).
News-Antique.com - Feb 07,2008 - • Franz Marc’s Weidende Pferde III sells for a record price of £12.3 ($24.3 ) million -
highest price for an Impressionist & Modern work in 2008
• German & Austrian Art commands extraordinary prices as 25 works realise
£39.6 million ($78.3 million) - highest total for any group of such works ever
sold in one evening in London
• Five lots sell for over £5 million
• 30 lots sell for over £1 million (47 lots over $1 million)
• Four new records established, for artists including Jawlensky and Marc
• 60 % of works sold for prices in excess of high estimate
LONDON, 5 FEBRUARY 2008 --- Sotheby’s Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art
tonight realized £116,699,900 ($230,517,312) – considerably in excess of the pre-sale estimate of
£81,090,000 - 112,110,000. The total realized is the highest for any sale ever staged by
Sotheby’s in Europe and the highest total in this category this year. Five lots sold for over £5
million – the highest number of lots ever sold at this level in any European auction; 30 lots were
sold for over one million pounds and 47 lots were sold for over $1 million. Four new artist’s
records were established, including those for Alexej von Jawlensky and Franz Marc.
Commenting on the sale, Melanie Clore, Co-Chairman Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art
Department Worldwide, said: “We are thrilled with tonight’s results, which demonstrate the strong
hunger in the market for quality works. The broad international buying from Russia and Asia as well as
Europe and the Americas was very much in evidence this evening. The sale was carefully edited with the
best offerings across a range of categories, and buyers responded with great enthusiasm.”
The top price achieved this evening was for Franz Marc’s Weidende Pferde III (lot 13), which
made £12,340,500 ($24,376,190 ) – doubling the pre-sale low estimate of £6,000,000, and
exceeding the record price established at Sotheby’s in New York in November last year (when
Der Wasserfall sold for $20,201,000). A magnificent museum quality work, it is the only example
from the artist’s iconic paintings of horses still in private hands.
Another powerful German Expressionist work, Schokko mit Tellerhut, (lot 8), by Alexej von
Jawlensky was pursued by several determined bidders who drove the price well beyond
estimate to a final £9,428,500 ($18,624,116 ). When this same work last appeared on the market
(at Sotheby’s New York in 2003) it made $8,296,000 – establishing a record price that was
tonight doubled.
These two works were among 25 German and Austrian Expressionist works sold tonight,
which together realised a combined total of £39,646,100 ($78,312,941) - the highest sum ever
realised for any offering of such works in Europe and well above the pre-sale estimate for
the group (£25,170,000 – 33,960,000).
Other periods and schools performed similarly well this evening: Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s La
Loge (lot 37) - an exquisite version of one of the Courtauld Gallery’s best-loved Impressionist
paintings – made £7,412,500 ($14,641,911), three times its pre-sale
