Christie's evening sale of Impressionist and Modern art at Rockefeller
Center on November 13, 2017 realized $479.3 million, a total that far exceeded
the overall presale estimate of $360 million.
All 12 of the
guaranteed lots, which had a combined low estimate of 63 million USD were sold while 88%
of lots found buyers. The most coveted painting, Vincent van Gogh‘s Laboureur dans un champ, St Remy (1889),
which carried an unpublished estimate of 45–65 million, went to a Chinese
collector for 81.3 million USD with premium, the second-highest auction price
on record for the artist.The same collector bought a1884 Renoir portrait for 8.2
million USD and a 1969–1970 Marc Chagall painting for 1.6 million.
The Van Gogh was one of a dozen lots from the collection of Texas
collectors and philanthropists Nancy Lee and Perry Bass. These lots were estimated
between 101.5 million and 146.7 million USD and all were sold for a total of 143
million USD.
Fernand Léger's Contrastes
de formes (1913) estimated at 65 million only fetched 70 million with premium, however a new. auction record
for a work by Léger, far beyond the previous record of 39.2 million USD
set in May 2008 at Sotheby's for La femme en bleu (1912–13).
Pablo Picasso's Femme
accroupie (Jacqueline) (1954), one of three works the artist painted
on October 8, 1954, of his new mistress and eventually, his second wife, sold for 36.9 million USD (Premium included) against a high estimate of 30
million while Joan Miro's Peinture(1933) ended its course at 23.3 million
against an estimate of 20 to 30 million.
Claude Monet's Matinée sur la Seine (1897)-one of
22 canvases translating the delicate early-morning light on a river near the
artist's Giverny home- sold for $23.3 million, between the $15–25 million
estimate Bought in Paris in 1998 for about 900,000 dollars,.Picasso's Figure
(de femme inspirée par la guerre d'Espagne), executed in 1937 when General
Franco's Nationalist soldiers launched their assault on the Republican-held city
of Málaga on the southern coast of Spain and given by the artist to his
mistress Dora Maar went for 16 million USD against an estimate of between 15
and 20 million.