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Created: June 30, 2003
Latest Update: June 30, 2003
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Backup of Intriguing Works Rise in London Sales
By Carol Vogel
SOURCE: New York Times
Copyright: Source Copyright.
Included here under Fair Use Doctrine for teaching purposes.

June 30, 2003
Intriguing Works Rise in London Sales
By CAROL VOGEL

[L] ONDON, June 29 — In the auction world, all it takes is two stubborn collectors with deep pockets to create a buzz. So it was in a packed salesroom at Sotheby's here on June 23, during the semiannual series of major auctions, that a pair of telephone bidders fought over a painting by Egon Schiele. The work, "Krumau Landscape: Town and River" (1916), set a record price for that artist's work, selling for $21 million, almost twice its high estimate of $10.8 million.

Not only was the painting considered rare by experts, but it also came with a compelling history. It originally belonged to Wilhelm and Daisy Hellmann, who were among the first families of Viennese art patronage in the early 20th century. The Hellmanns acquired the Expressionist painting directly from Schiele, who was a friend. In 1938 it was seized by the Nazis and auctioned in 1942 to Wolfgang Gurlitt, a German dealer who later sold it to the Neue Galerie in Linz, Austria. It hung there from 1953 until earlier this year, when it was returned to heirs of the Hellmanns, living in Britain, who gave it to Sotheby's to sell.

A canvas of bright orange, red and brown rooftops painted from a high vantage, with a river winding through one side of it, the painting is considered especially important by experts who think it is one of Schiele's most powerful late works. It is also particularly desirable given the fashion for German and Austrian Expressionist art.

The $21 million paid for this Schiele was the highest price ever paid for a restituted artwork sold at auction, and the most expensive painting of the week's sales. The buyer has not been disclosed. All the usual names have been bandied about, from Ronald S. Lauder, chairman of the Museum of Modern Art and founder of the Neue Galerie in New York, a museum of German and Austrian art, to Rudolph Leopold, a passionate Viennese collector, and Lily Safra, widow of the billionaire banker Edmond J. Safra. Another possibility, experts said, is David Thomson, the son of Lord Thomson of Fleet, former owner of The Times of London and one of the richest men in Canada. The family's collection has been promised to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The rarity of "Krumau Landscape" coupled with the allure of its provenance made it one of the bright spots in a week of rather predictable ups and downs. While the top international dealers gathered here, the well-trodden path from Sotheby's salesrooms on New Bond Street to Christie's headquarters on nearby King Street was noticeably lacking in Americans. For the last two seasons they have been conspicuously absent, choosing to stay home and bid either through their dealers or on the telephone, or perhaps not at all.

In trying to analyze the week's results, Thomas Gibson, a leading London dealer, said: "Everyone likes to create a mystery about the art market, but there are no mysteries. If something was an exceptional work by a popular artist, it did well."

Besides exceptional works, those works with unusual or compelling provenances outperformed the run-of-the-mill, irrespective of whether they were important.

Van Goghs, no matter what their quality or subject matter, attract collectors. At Christie's two van Gogh paintings and a drawing became top sellers, and all were bought by unidentified telephone bidders. The most expensive, "Still Life, Vase With Carnations" (1890), sold for $7.1 million, above its $4.9 million low estimate. Three bidders went for "The Reader of Novels," an 1888 painting of a dark-haired girl with her head in a book, which brought $5.6 million, also above its $4.9 million low estimate.

(Prices include the auction houses' commissions. At Sotheby's it is 20 percent on the first $100,000 and 12 percent of the rest; Christie's charges 19.5 percent of the first $100,000 and 12 percent above that. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)

More interesting than either painting, however, was a van Gogh drawing. That sketch of his famous yellow house was made on the back of a letter he wrote to his brother, Theo, on Sept. 28, 1888, in which he described a painting he was about to work on. That painting was "The Yellow House," which now hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and Christie's was selling the sketch for it, known as "Vincent's House at Arles." The sketch sold for $1.4 million, midway between its $1.2 million and $1.6 million estimates. Christie's identified the buyer only as an American collector.

Throughout the week works on paper brought high prices. Christie's sold two collections of drawings, gouaches and watercolors. Both had low estimates, a smart tactic by Christie's because it contributed to a feeding frenzy. One collection included 30 works that belonged to Efstratios Eleftheriades, better known as Tériade, the publisher of 20th-century art books who died in 1983. They were being sold by his widow, Alice Tériade, to benefit a French hospital foundation.

Among the top work in that sale was Miró's "Rooster," a bright work on paper that was bought by the Nahmad family, dealers with galleries in New York and London. The Miró work sold for nearly $3 million, more than five times its high $560,000 estimate.

Also for sale at Christie's was a group of Cézanne drawings that had belonged to Adrien Chappuis, author of the catalogue raisonné of Paul Cézanne's drawings. The collection remained in the Chappuis family until 1999, when it was bequeathed to the family of Georges and Jean Barut, friends of Chappuis. Top among the group was a self-portrait of Cézanne with a disheveled collar and a straight-on stare; it sold to an unidentified collector for $737,339, nearly six times its $130,000 high estimate.

In the Impressionist and Modern art sales and in the contemporary art auctions, when a mediocre painting came up, bidding frequently evaporated, and the room went dead. Banal examples of Klee or Renoir, Warhol or Fontana went unsold.

There was little doubt as to which artists were in fashion. European buyers had a healthy appetite for Surrealist works by artists like Magritte and Delvaux.

At Sotheby's contemporary art sale, a striking Fontana, "Spatial Concept, the End of God" (1964), a large bright-yellow egg-shaped canvas punctuated by Fontana's familiar holes, was bought by Anthony Meier, the San Francisco dealer, for $2.2 million, well above its $1.3 million high estimate. Five bidders tried to buy that work, and after the sale experts speculated that Mr. Meier was bidding for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which he has bid for many times.

Also popular at Christie's were three paintings by the Russian-born painter Nicolas de Staël, who died in 1955. "It is interesting to note that if any artist has been in the shadows for years and has a major retrospective, people reassess that artist's place in history," Mr. Gibson said, referring to the current retrospective of de Staël's work at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris.

rices for work by Gerhard Richter, strong since his major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last year, have grown even stronger. Four of his paintings from various periods were among the Top 20 best sellers of the week. At Christie's, three bidders went after "Forest (3)" (1990), one of Mr. Richter's bright-blue, blurry abstract images. Rachel Mauro, who runs the Dickinson Roundell gallery in New York, bought it for $1.3 million, in the middle of its $1.2 million to $1.6 million estimates.

At Sotheby's two telephone bidders tried for "Small Canary Landscape" (1971), one of Mr. Richter's dreamy, photo-based images. It sold to an unidentified collector for $512,650, above its $471,000 high estimate.

Many in the art world noticed the growing difference between the market for Impressionist and Modern art and that of contemporary art. After Christie's sale of contemporary art on Thursday night, Armand Bartos, a Manhattan dealer, said he could feel the market for contemporary art getting stronger and stronger.

"Over the next three to five years the offerings and audience for contemporary art will increase," he said, "whereas unless someone dies less will come up for sale in the area of Impressionist and Modern art, so there will be less buyers. Just look at the inflation of younger artists."

Tobias Meyer, director of Sotheby's contemporary art department worldwide, said he noticed that this season in particular the audience at the Impressionist and Modern art sales and the auctions for contemporary art were markedly different.

"New buyers, people who have made money in global financial markets, are no longer going into the Impressionist and Modern field as they did in the past," he said. "These people are interested in postwar art. As a result there's a different energy in the salesrooms. There is more supply and more fashions."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company