Upcoming London Sales

The Wall Street Journal has a quick look at the upcoming major winter art sales.  The interest aspect of the article is the expectations of European collectors getting back in the art market.  Last year the European debt crisis had many collectors nervous, and they failed to buy.  Now, things are better in the economy and there is more of comfort level with upper market collectors.

The Wall Street Journal reports

European collectors who didn't splurge on blue-chip art last year amid their bank crises are feeling calmer now about their own countries' economies—and more confident in art values overall, dealers say. As a result, the auction houses have tailored their coming sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art to suit European tastes, including artists with strong regional followings like Joan Miró, Max Beckmann and David Hockney.

In a telling switch-up, Sotheby's sent its priciest offering—a 1932 Pablo Picasso portrait of his blonde mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter—on a marketing tour to New York and Paris this time around but skipped sending it to farther art-buying hot spots like Hong Kong. "Woman Sitting by the Window," is expected to sell for at least $40 million.

Sotheby's specialist Helena Newman said the "chipper mood" in Europe was a determining factor in convincing several American sellers to put their art up for bid in London this season, rather than wait for New York's sales later in the spring.

These sellers include the estate of Ira Wallach. The New York paper-products tycoon and his wife, Miriam, collected pieces by Miró—an artist with a strong sales record among European buyers. Last summer, Sotheby's in London sold "Blue Star" to a European buyer for $36.9 million, a new auction high for the artist. Now, the Wallach estate has enlisted Sotheby's to get at least $12.6 million for Miró's 1945 image of a boxy figure floating on a creamy background amid geometric shapes, "Woman Dreaming of Escape."

Ms. Newman said she also expects Europeans to compete hard on Tuesday for Beckmann's 1949 "Before the Ball (Two Women with a Cat)," in part because works from this time period are hard to find outside America, where the German Expressionist painter was living after World War II.

Source: Wall Street Journal  (many WSJ articles are behind a paywall, if the link does not work, try going to Google news, type the name of the article in "Selling a Sheep And a Mistress" and the google news link should work)