NEW YORK - A sale of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's Holdings Inc. in New York brought in $81.45 million, below the auction house's lowest estimate of $101.3 million.
It was the second sale during the Impressionist and modern auction season in New York, which started poorly Monday when a sale at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg, the third-largest auctioneer, produced $7.01 million in sales instead of the expected take of at least $49.31 million.
"It was a welcome relief after the debacle of last night," said London-based art dealer Andrew Kalman. "But so many of the results are down to conservative value in a market that is a little anxious and careful."
The Sotheby's results were encouraging to some art dealers and gallery owners, who measure the private art market's health by the public results of fine art sales during May and November. At the end of the sale, several dealers applauded.
"This sale was really the sale to gauge where the market was at, and some people came in holding their breaths," said David Norman, worldwide co-chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art for Sotheby's.
Of 66 artworks offered, 45 pieces found buyers and 21 failed to sell. Norman said 22 percent of the pieces sold for more than the estimated value, while 45 percent were within the expected value, and 31 percent sold for less than their pre-sale estimate. Ninety percent of the buyers were American, said Norman.
'Femme Nue Debout'
The biggest disappointment of the evening was a Cezanne nude painted circa 1898, Femme Nue Debout, which had been estimated at $10 million to $15 million, and didn't find a buyer. Bidding began at $6.7 million and petered out at $8.75 million.
Charles Moffett, worldwide co-chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art for Sotheby's, called it "one of the greatest paintings that's been on the market in a long time."
"I will puzzle over the fact that it didn't go," he said after the sale.
The highest price of the evening - $18.71 million - went to a Claude Monet 1903-1908 painting, Nympheas, part of a series of water lilies the artist completed late in his career, between 1903 and 1908. It had been estimated at $16 million to $20 million. In November 1999, Christie's sold the same painting for $22.6 million.
Picasso, Leger
Three of the top 10 sales were for pieces from the private collection of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. An Amedeo Modigliani portrait, Giovanotto Dai Capelli Rossi, painted in 1919, sold for $8.48 million, just above the high estimate of $8 million.
Pablo Picasso's 1924 portrait of his son, Paulo, dressed as a harlequin, Le Fils De L'Artiste En Arlequin, sold for $2.21 million, within the estimate of $2 million to $3 million. And a Fernand Leger portrait of four nude figures, Composition Les Trois Soeurs, dated 1950-1951, brought $2.21 million, also within its estimate of $2 million to $3 million.
All of the Guccione pieces on sale Tuesday night were exhibited in 1994 at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York as part of an exhibit, From Botticelli To Matisse: Masterpieces of the Guccione Collection.
Four of the 12 didn't find buyers. Sotheby's had valued the Guccione collection at $17 million to $25 million; it brought $17.15 million.
"It has not crashed," said art collector R.J. Allen, a retired banker from Oak Brook, Ill., who bid on two works, but didn't win either. "Last night people thought it had crashed. I'm happy to see the prices are normal."