Last night’s Impressionist and Modern sale brought in $368M … not a bad total considering more than 20% of the works offered did not sell (64 works offered and 50 sold). The top lot for the evening was Vincent van Gogh’s L’allée Des Alyscamps at $66.3M (bought by an Asian private who was seated in the room) and coming in second was a Monet at $54M.
It is interesting to note that like many sales, it was just a few works that made all the difference. Here, the van Gogh accounted for 18% of the sale’s total take and the top ten lots, which included 4 Monets, brought in $255M or almost 70% of the sale’s total.
I should add that the results were far better than their 2014 May sale when 71 works were offered and only 50 sold for a total of $219M; however, their November sale saw a total take of $422M and a sell-through rate of almost 80%. Top lot in that sale was also a van Gogh and it too went to an Asian buyer. Guess we all know where the ‘big money’ is today.
This year the competition decided to hold their sale next week, so we will have to wait for the comps.
Vincent van Gogh “L’allée Des Alyscamps”