Works on Paper

The Telegraph looks at the works on paper auction from the recent Impressionist and Modern  sales in London. According to the article, the sale of Jan Krugier, a dealer did extremely well with a £24 million pre sale estimate and final sales figure of £74.8.

The Telegraph reports

Works on paper rarely grab the limelight at Impressionist and Modern art sales, but the collection formed by the flamboyant art dealer, Jan Krugier, who died in 2008, was one of the highlights of the Sotheby’s sales last week. The 119 works, that ranged from Goya to Picasso and were estimated at £24 million, completely sold out fetching £74.8 million, with many records tumbling in the process. A gouache of a Minotaure by Picasso was pursued by collector Dmitri Mavromatis and others before selling to a phone bidder for £10.4 million. An etching of La Femme qui Pleure broke the print record for Picasso selling to Ben Frija of Oslo’s Galleri K, for £3.2 million.  A 1913 drawing of an Italian piazza by Giorgio de Chirico sold to a UK collector for £1.3 million. It had been estimated at only £35,000.

It was a feature of the sale that estimates were pitched at attractive levels, encouraging multiple bids. It was also indicative of the quality of Krugier’s drawings that museums were in contention for some of the best. An as yet unnamed British institution bought a 1911, cubistic drawing by Picasso for £626,500, while the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles had to beat off stiffer competition for a drawing of a beggar by Georges Seurat for £2.4 million. The Seurat had been estimated at just £80,000.

Krugier acquired a large number of works from auction allowing for comparisons of purchase and selling prices. Perhaps the best rate of return was on a black chalk drawing of a madman, Loco, from one of Goya’s private albums of drawings which Krugier bought in 1980 for £31,500. Last week it sold for £1.9million. The worst return was probably a watercolour of trees by Cezanne, which he bought for £308,000 in 1988, and which was sold, 26 years later, to London dealer, Jean-Luc Baroni for £326,500. Even great dealers get carried away buying at auction, and Krugier was no exception. In 2008 he paid a triple estimate 1.5 million euros for a Picasso coloured female nude drawing in Paris which sold last week for the equivalent of only one million euros.

Source: The Telegraph