Christie’s was looking to make £8m from their very compact sale of 24 Orientalist works in London yesterday. With 71% of the lots–or 17 out of 24–selling for £10.57m, they ended up doing quite well. One reason was this John Frederick Lewis watercolor called The Arab scribe, Cairo which had a £700k high estimate but was bid to almost three times that, finally selling at slightly more than £2m. A Frederick Bridgman, The Nubian Storyteller in the Harem is another reason though the £769k paid was only slightly above the high estimate.