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The Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale and Art of the Surreal at Christie's in London on February 28 2017, achievied a combined total of £136,874,598 with lively bidding for Portrait de Lluis Alemany, a work dating from the very beginning of Picasso's career (£773,000 ) and continued with Berthe Morisot's "Femme en noir or Avant le théâtre", which achieved £2,045,000 against a pre-sale estimate of £600,000-800,000 and her "Femme et enfant au balcon" , which more than doubled its high estimate to realise £4,085,000.

The nine further works from the Personal Collection of Barbara Lambrecht, including paintings by Kees van Dongen, Raoul Dufy, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Félix Vallotton, each sold above estimate with the group totalling £15,945,000, with all proceeds benefitting the Rubens Prize Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen.

The top work of the evening was Paul Gauguin's highly sought after "Te Fare" (La maison), which sold for £20,325,000 while René Magritte's "La corde sensible" set a new world record at auction for the artist of £14,441,348, with "Le domaine d'Arnheim" becoming the third highest price for Magritte at auction with a final bid of £10,245,000 confirming that works by Surreal artists continue to inspire collectors globally.

Determined bidding was seen for three oil paintings that trace Le Corbusier's artistic career from the 1920s to the 1940s from the Heidi Weber Museum Collection. With outstanding sell through rates of 92% by lot and 96% by value there was high energy felt in the first auctions of 20th Century at Christie's. Registered bidders from 39 countries across five continents demonstrate continued global interest from buyers with notable bidding from Asia.

"The exceptional sell through rates demonstrate that works from prestigious collections such as the Personal Collection of Barbara Lambrecht and the Heidi Weber Museum Collection engage collectors internationally. The sales showcased works from early Impressionism through to the Modernism and Abstraction of Le Corbusier and interest was strong across the evening with active bidding for masterpieces by Gauguin and Monet as well as for works by the female Impressionists Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzalès, which sold well over their estimates and the totals achieved of £136,874,598 for the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale and Art of the Surreal confirm that the global appetite of buyers continues to be strong", said Jay Vincze, Head of the Impressionist & Modern art department at Christie's London.

Together with works from the Art Institute of Chicago and the family of Max Ernst, the exceptional provenance of the works was matched by an international passion for Surreal art. Reflecting the highest quality of works offered, the sell through rate of 98% by value was the highest ever achieved.

Also from the Lambrecht collection, Claude Monet's "Les Bords de la Seine au Petit-Gennevilliers", a landscape painted in the immediate aftermath of the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, achieved £3,525,000, Eva Gonzalès's "Portrait de Jeanne Gonzalès" went for £137,000, "Femme au manchon" by Félix Vallotton more than doubled its high estimate to sell for £389,000 and Kees van Dongen's "Deux anges" was hammered down at £989,000.

The group of three oil paintings by Le Corbusier from the Heidi Weber Museum Collection were in high demand with competitive bidding on the phone and in the room, they were led by "Nature morte et figure", painted by the artist in 1927, who returned to it in 1938 and again in 1944 which sold for £3,301,000 while Paul Delvaux's "Le village des sirènes" sold by the Art Institute of Chicago fetched £3,077,000.