Sotheby’s London Evening Sale Musters £83.6 Million

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Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction took in £83.6 million (U.S. $106 million) in London last night, with 46 of 51 works sold—just over 90% by lot.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir‘s Bouquet de lilas (1878) was one of the standouts, selling for £6.9 million (including fees), more than double the high estimate of £3 million (not including fees).

Demand was much cooler for a similarly-sized Renoir, Bouquet de fleurs à l’éventail (1872), which fetched only £720,000, well below Sotheby’s estimate of £1.2–1.8 million.

The auction’s most expensive works—Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict (1982) and Pablo Picasso‘s Guitare sur un tapis rouge (1922)—both sold towards the low end of their estimates, for £16 million and £10 million respectively.

Three works by Cy Twombly and Lucio Fontana beat estimates, while Ellsworth Kelly‘s Black Panel with Curve (1999) sold for £864,000, roughly half its estimate of £1.4–1.8 million.

Elizabeth Peyton‘s small portrait Queen Elizabeth II (1995) sold for £384,000, well short of its high estimate of £600,000.

Another portrait, Tamara de Lempicka’s Nu adossé (1925), was withdrawn from the sale, despite having an ostensibly safe estimate of £6-8 million.

Sotheby’s is shouldering most of the load at this year’s summer art auctions in London. They offered £96 million in estimated sales last night, compared to Christie’s £9.1 million and Phillips’ £12 million at their upcoming sales on Thursday.

The total value across the auction houses has fallen from £253 million last year to £117 million.

It was Sotheby’s who abstained from the Hong Kong auctions earlier this month, where Christie’s sales fell 22% on 2023. —[O]

Main image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bouquet de lilas (1878). Oil on canvas. 65.4 x 53.8 cm. Courtesy Sotheby's.