Following Christie's mild Impressionist and Modern art evening sale, Sotheby's too had a less than spectacular sale. The sale totaled $219 million including buyers premiums with a total pre sale estimate range of $218.1 million to $317.9 million. If you deduct the buyer sales commissions the sale did not makes it low estimated mark.
Te sale offered an impressive number of lots for an evening sale with 71. The number of lots sold was 50 with 21 lots failing to sell. This makes for a rather poor 70.4% sell through rate. The sale sold a poor $76.9% by value.
Top selling lot was Picasso's Le sauvetage, oil on canvas selling for $31.525 million including buyers premium against a pre sale estimate of $14-18 million.
From looking at what sold, the top ten appear to have done well, with 6 lots beating the high estimate, 2 lots between the estimates and 2 lots selling below the low estimate. That makes me think the sale might have had too many lots offered, and perhaps the quality fell off.
The NY Times reported on the sale
Source: The NY TimesIt was another bumpy night at the spring auctions, the second of the week’s evening sales of Impressionist and modern art. On Wednesday, many in the art world converged upon Sotheby’s, where nearly a third of the art went unsold. Paintings and sculptures by masters like Degas, Renoir and Picasso were either overpriced or were just not good enough to tempt buyers.
Asian buyers were by far the most active shoppers, bidding consistently by telephone through the auction house’s representatives throughout the evening. According to officials there, Asian bidders managed to snap up $63.9 million worth of art, or roughly one-third of the evening’s $219 million total. Sotheby’s had estimated the sale would bring in $218.1 million to $317.9 million. The auction house offered 71 works, and of those, 21 failed to sell.
A Modigliani portrait from 1919 was sold for $17.6 million, above its high estimate of $12 million, at Christie’s on Tuesday.Christie’s First Spring Sale Drops Prices Back to EarthMAY 6, 2014
The mediocre results followed an unexciting night at Christie’s on Tuesday. That auction house managed to sell $285.9 million, above its low estimate of $244.5 million but not close to its high of $360.4 million.
For Sotheby’s, the auction was yet another difficult moment. The company has been battling the activist hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who earlier this week pushed his way onto the board along with two of his allies, after a bitter, seven-month challenge that included fierce attacks about the company’s performance and its management.
For Sotheby’s, there were a few bright spots on Wednesday. Four bidders fought over Picasso’s “Le Sauvetage,” or Rescue, a colorful 1932 scene of bathers on the beach, painted one summer at Boisgeloup, France. It had been estimated to sell for $14 million to $18 million. Charles Moffett, a vice chairman of Sotheby’s in New York, took the winning bid on behalf of an unidentified American telephone bidder who paid $31.5 million. Before the sale, dealers said the painting belonged to Jerome Fisher, a collector and a founder of the footwear company Nine West, who had bought the painting at Sotheby’s in 2004 for $14.8 million.
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