Edouard Manet Auction Record

Sotheby's offered up hedge fund manager and art collector Steve Cohen's Self Portrait with a Palette by Edouard Manet. The self portrait for sold for a record price of $33.2 million against an estimate of $29 to $44.5 million.  It just passed the low estimate including a buyers premium, and was enough to set a new record for a painting by Manet.  The previous high for a Manet was paid at a Chirstie's sale in 1989 and sold for $26.4 million.

A Picasso from the Blue Period will soon be on the block block at Christie's with an estimate of near $60 million.  The data and results from the London sales are just starting to come in, I will post more information on the sales when the houses release the final results of the sale.  Expectations are the London impressionist and modern sales will total over $500 million.

Bloomberg reported on the Manet

Two weeks of evening sales of Impressionist and contemporary works at Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury & Co. carry an estimate of 350 million pounds, more than three times last year’s total low estimate.

“It’s a great Manet,” New York art dealer Christophe van de Weghe said in an interview at the sale. “Many museums would like to have this picture. It was a good buy at the low estimate.”

The 1878 painting, showing Manet dressed as a Parisian dandy, rather than as a working artist, is a well-known highlight of the art collection formed by Steven A. Cohen, founder of SAC Capital Advisors LP. Cohen paid $18.7 million for the painting at Christie’s International’s 1997 auction of the collection of the Wall Street financier John Loeb. The seller wasn’t named by Sotheby’s.

The previous highest price paid for the French artist was $26.4 million, for the 1878 street scene “La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux” at Christie’s in New York in November 1989.

To read the full Bloomberg report, click HERE.