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British Summer Time: 1 Week, 3 Auctions and £105M in London
The sun comes out for arts and culture as Sotheby’s stages stand-out season of exhibitions and auctions.
L ondon’s cultural scene dazzled this week as The Summer Season at Sotheby’s earned over £100 million in sales across 219 lots. Amidst a bustling capital, where music, theatre and visual arts converge, Sotheby’s was a pivotal destination, drawing 400 global collectors from 45 countries to vie for a myriad of artistic epochs and styles.
The three sales were led by The Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction, which brought in £83.6 million across 51 lots – and which is recapped in depth here. Two day sales brought the week’s total to £105 million, with 20 lots achieving more than £1 million. Nearly half of the lots surpassed their high estimates, bring the average lot value across all auctions to £1.8 million (£2.3 million in the marquee evening sale) – all of which demonstrates the continued strength of the British art market and the outsize role that London plays as one of the world’s cultural capitals. Significantly, more than 17,000 members of the public have visited Sotheby’s galleries during The Summer Season to view the auctions and London: An Artistic Crossroads, a loan exhibition of 12 masterpieces from 12 leading British museums. (The exhibition remains open through 5 July.)
The auctions showcased a remarkable array of masterworks by iconic artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat (£16 million), Pablo Picasso (£10.7 million), Paula Rego (£2.1 million) and more. Pierre-Auguste Renoir proved to be a favourite, with his Bouquet de lilas doubling its estimate at £6.9 million following a 10-minute bidding battle, his Femme dans un paysage, Cagnes leading The Modern Day Auction at £576,000 and, perhaps most intriguingly, a fragment of an untitled landscape igniting an eight-way bidding frenzy to achieve £336,000 – six times its estimate.
‘This week, the sun shone on London’s diverse cultural events – from sold-out concerts to critically acclaimed theatre and stunning visual arts, bringing millions of pounds into the capital’s culture economy. Sotheby’s played a key role in this financial contribution, outshining the rest of the art market by selling over £100 million worth of art across 219 lots, considerably more than any other auction house. Over 200 artworks found new homes, as 400 global collectors flocked to bid on works by Picasso, Basquiat, Renoir and more. As the capital gears up for Wimbledon next week, Sotheby’s is preparing for its auction of Old Master paintings, drawings and sculptures, presenting a further £45 million of art to the market.’
- Sebastian Fahey, Managing Director of Global Fine Arts, Sotheby’s
As is often the case, the marquee sales were buoyed by a magnificent private collection, this time that of Ralph I. Goldenberg. Seventy-two works from the collector’s assemblage of modern and contemporary art, much of which was displayed in a stunning minimalist home designed by John Pawson, brought in a combined total of £17.3 million across the three auctions – £12.9 million of which was made in The Evening Auction. Two works by Cy Twombly topped the evening sale’s offerings from the Goldenberg collection (Untitled [Formian Dreams + Actuality] at £2.5 million and By the Ionian Sea at £2.2 million), and two works by Bryce Marden led the day sale’s (Figure and St. Barts 2, both at £324,000).
This week’s three modern and contemporary auctions followed earlier landmark sales of Graham Sutherland’s Study of Sir Winston Churchill (£660,000, the second-highest price for a portrait of the prime minister) and a monumental Sea Form work by Dame Barbara Hepworth (£4 million) in The Modern British & Irish Art Evening Auction. And if this season’s success so far is an indicator, next week’s Old Master & 19th Century Paintings Evening Auction will be yet another art event that’s certainly not to be missed.
