Solid results at Christie’s Modern and Impressionist evening sale

Christie's

Christie’s amassed a total of £147 million at their Modern and Impressionist Evening sale in London on 4 February, with the most expensive lots, Joan Mirò’s Painting (Women, Moon, Birds), and Paul Cézanne’s Vue sur l’Estaque et le Château, selling for £15,538,500 and £13,522,500 respectively.

Also amongst the most lucrative lots were works by Amadeo Modigliani, Alberto Giacometti, Marc Chagall, Juan Gris, Henry Moore, and René Magritte. Of a total of 80 works on offer, 70 found buyers, representing 88% of lots by number and 94% by value. 36 of the 70 works that sold fetched over £1 million, and 45 sold for over a million dollars. Of those, two made over £10 million and five made over $10 million. One artist record was set for a German Expressionist work.

“For a number of works today and yesterday the estimate was quite aggressively set,” said London-based art adviser Patrick Legant, in an interview with Bloomberg. “People are being careful. They recognise some of the estimates are high and they don’t just bid blindly,” he added.