Godfrey Barker tries to explain the unexpected strength of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern sale on This Is London:

The art market was left in confusion at Christie’s when its big London winter auction of Impressionist and Modern Pictures turned into a totally unexpected £63 million roaring success. Bidders flung money about as if the credit crunch did not exist and the market meltdown in New York last November never happened. [ . . . ] Nine of 47 lots went over high estimates, 20 more hit targets and private bidders scooped the top 10 lots against the art trade. [ . . . ] In short, Christie’s did not see this coming. The auction was cleverly loaded with popular, mainstream pictures which buyers can resell easily —exactly half were attractive women by Monet, Renoir, Van Dongen, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec and Matisse. [ . . . ] Dealers last night were baffled. Was it a madness, a miracle, a lurch from money into art or just a pause in the world’s financial storm? There were no tough, ugly, unusual and mentally challenging images. It offered juicy temptations in works that had never been at auction before. Estimates were helpfully set at about 20 per cent down on last summer’s record levels. The mix was enough to tempt out more money than anyone guessed at. In a few cases, prices hit the highs of last summer which was the summit to the tremendous price climb of 2005-08, an ascent far steeper than anything on Wall Street. [ . . . ] Generally, the atmosphere was so different from the disastrous New York sales after the failure of Lehman Brothers last autumn as to make bidders wonder if the world had changed. Has the market stabilised at a new, lower level? “Definitely,” said Bond Street dealer Matthew Green of Richard Green Fine Art. “But very good things are doing as well as six months ago.”

“Which would you rather have?” asked Mayfair dealer Alan Hobart, who bought an early Marino Marini sculpture for £769,250. “Your money in an uncertain future at a bank or a Picasso?”

Monet-spinner boosts £63m sale (This Is London)