Christie’s Sells $32m Pink Diamond Ring in Hong Kong: An oval fancy vivid pink diamond of nearly 15cts sold in Hong Kong for 249m HKD. …
Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design, Hong Kong = $119.84m ($15.36m): George Condo was again the fought-over star of the Phillips sale in Hong Kong. Originally estimated at 3-5m HKD, Young Girl with a Blue Dress from 2007 was sold for 12m HKD ($1.5m.) Roy Lichtenstein’s Landscape with Poet (Study) was another dynamic lot with a final price of 8m HKD over a 4.5m HKD low estimate. Notable failures were works by Adrian Ghenie and a nurse painting by Richard Prince. …
Artcurial’s Camille Claudel Sale = €3.6m ($4.3m): The family of sculptor Camille Claudel offered 20 works at Artcurial which made €3.6m but a dozen of those works were pre-empted by six French institutions. …
Sotheby’s Modern British Art Sale = £10.48m: The top lot was Christopher Nevinson’s World War I image A Dawn, 1914 which made £1.86m over a £1m high estimate. The artist’s Looking Down on Downtown from 1920 performed even better with a £519k final price besting the £150k high estimate. Two works by Winston Churchill also performed exceptionally well, Landscape with Two Trees, made £597k over a £150k high estimate and The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell made more than four times the high estimate. …
Christie’s Modern British and Irish Evening sale = £13.25m: Christie’s held a broader series of British Modern and Impressionist painting sales in both day and evening sessions. The day sale adds an additional £3.57m to the total. Among the top evening lots were Barry Flanagan’s Nijinsky Hare made £1.328m; Pauline Boty’s Bum made twice the high estimate for £632k; and Ben Nicolson’s Sept 62 (Lirkion) was sold for a price almost three times the high estimate at £728k.