Femme endormie by Pablo Picasso
On Thursday, April 10th, Christie’s continued its string of Paris sales with a group of impressionist and modern paintings. Over 100 lots crossed the block, mainly consisting of nineteenth and early twentieth-century works by European artists. The sale featured many of the usual suspects, including an ink drawing by Picasso that took the top spot. Femme endormie is dated August 19, 1952, having last sold at Christie’s Paris in 2015 for €337.5K w/p. Christie specialists anticipated the work to do slightly better this time around, assigning it an estimate range of €320K to €520K. Unfortunately, the bidding fell a little short, with the drawing hammering at €300K / $332.2K (or €378K / $418.5K w/p).
La Promenade au bord de la mer by Raoul Dufy
Next up was Raoul Dufy’s 1924 painting La Promenade au bord de la mer, showing a walkway by the ocean featuring several boats and ships. The last time this came up at auction was over a decade ago at Christie’s London, where it sold for £314.5K, or roughly $512.8K at the time. While the market for Dufy paintings hasn’t taken a significant dip lately, this painting lost a good chunk of its previous value. Like the Picasso, it fell slightly short of Christie’s expectations, selling for €285K / $315.6K (or €359.1K / $397.6K w/p) against a €300K minimum estimate. And finally, in third was Henri Lebasque’s 1906 painting Voiliers dans le port de Saint-Tropez. The artist is nearly always categorized as a Post-Impressionist painter. However, the brighter notes of purple may indicate the influence of Fauvism. Lebasque was friends with Henri Matisse but was not himself considered a member of the Fauvist group. The color palette and the divisionist technique are most definitely Post-Impressionist. The painting has been in the same collection since the 1920s, this being the first time it has appeared on the secondary market. While the Picasso and the Dufy sold for slightly under estimate, the Lebasque did the opposite and sold for far above its high estimate. While not quite double, the painting regardless did impressively well, hammering at €260K / $287.9K (or €327.6K / $362.7K w/p) against a €180K high estimate.
Voiliers dans le port de Saint-Tropez by Henri Lebasque
Of the one hundred eight available lots, sixteen (or just under 15%) sold for more than double their high estimates. Three sold for more than five times their high estimates. All three of these were part of the series of fourteen works by Marc Chagall that marked the beginning of the sale. They were works on paper consigned to Christie’s by the artist’s estate. Bouquet de glaïeuls pour le 16 avril is made from crayon, pencil, and pastel, dating to 1980. What makes the work unusual, though, is the artist’s signature. While nearly all of Chagall’s work simply contains his last name, this one features the artist’s first name written in Cyrillic script. It ended up selling for €28K, 5.8 times its €4.8K high estimate. The second work, Étude pour “Job”, is pencil and pen on grid paper. It is a study from 1975 for his later painting Job. The study sold for €20K, or 10 times its €2K high estimate. Finally, Esquisse pour “Paysage de Paris, place de la Concorde” is odd for a Chagall work because it is a simple cityscape sketch. There are no bright colors, no floating figures, no animals, and no allusions to Jewish life in Russia. Executed in the late 1960s, it is made from just pencil on paper. With a pre-sale high estimate of €1.2K, the sketch sold for €11K, or 9.2 times the high estimate. Of all the available lots, twenty-seven sold within their estimates, giving Christie’s 25% accuracy rate. The greater portion of lots sold above estimate, totaling forty-three (40%). An additional twenty-two (20%) sold below estimate, while sixteen (15%) went unsold. The sale as a whole brought in a total hammer price of €5.5 million / $6.1 million against a total low estimate of €4.45 million.