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Modern Art Ascendant: London Imp-Mod Market Analysis

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Monet, Coucher de Soleil (200-300k) 1,568,750

This analysis of the London Impressionist and Modern auction sales results—made possible with data from our partners at Live Auction Art—is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

The London sales cycle of Impressionist and Modern art showed a resurgence in value in the category. When the Impressionist and Modern works included in Phillips sale held during the week of Contemporary art auctions are added to the Impressionist and Modern sales totals at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the Impressionist and Modern category significantly out-performed Contemporary art.

Our numbers show almost £393m in total sales for Impressionist and Modern art in London which is nearly £50m more than the sales volume for Contemporary art (we’ll publish those numbers shortly.) Here the news is that more money was spent on Modern art. And the overall driver of that spending is the market for works by Pablo Picasso.

The market share numbers (shown below) make the case in the starkest manner. But first let’s address some high-level learnings from the sales.

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Christie’s Surprise Picasso Buyer and Other Tales From a Long Sale

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This recap of Christie's Impressionist-Modern and Surrealist Evening sale in London is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before you are billed. 

Christie's Evening sales of Impressionist and Modern art as well as Surrealist art last night were a success by the numbers. The combined sales made £149.5m which was £13m more than the same sales a year before. If you are looking to those numbers to give you some sense of market direction or mood for what Christie's now calls the 20th Century art market, you ought to look elsewhere. The sales were punctuated with lots that were avidly pursued though price levels proved important. Estimates over £5m saw light bidding and after many seasons where the auction houses have actively managed their sales to present high sell-through rates, Christie's ran two large sales last night that they were more than willing to let 'sell-through' at only 78% of the works. Make no mistake, 78% is traditionally a solid, very business-like sale result. Only in the last few years of hyper-competition (with the added sense that the Impressionist and Modern market needed to project stability,) have the the sell-through rates consistently posted in the high 80s or low 90s.

We will have a more detailed analysis of the lot-by-lot sales in the next two weeks. For now, here are some impressions.

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The Mother of All Bradfords at Phillips in London + Another at Christie’s

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Melanie Gerlis’s column in the Financial Times has the announcement that Mark Bradford’s massive Helter Skelter I from 2007 will come to market in London next month:

The auction house has won a massive consignment from tennis legend John McEnroe in the form of Mark Bradford’s “Helter Skelter I” (2007), to be offered in London on March 8 (est £6m-£8m, third-party guaranteed). The price could more than double the Los Angeles artist’s record, though a work of this size (10 metres wide) has never come to auction before.

McEnroe worked with Josh Baer to buy the work four years ago just before the Bradford market saw substantial upward price movement. In 2014, Bradford’s top price was $2.6m. A year later, four works had traded publicly at higher prices all the way up to $5.8m which stands at the record price for the artist.

Since that time,  Bradford’s stature and visibility has only risen. Bradford represented the US at the Venice Biennale recently and the showing at the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC of the massive Pickett’s Charge.

Over at Christie’s, there will be a cheaper work, Bear Running from the Shotgun from 2014 which was last seen at Art Basel in Miami Beach in December of the same year. It’s estimated at £2.2-2.8m.

Christie’s Announces $80m Francis Bacon for Frieze

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Christie’s has another “barn find” of a painting that has been in the same family for 45 years and not been shown publicly:

Francis Bacon’s landmark painting Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971, unseen in public for 45 years. It stands as the grand finale to his celebrated body of Papal portraits and is the only painting that unites the Pope with his greatest love George Dyer, who is depicted as the Pope’s reflection.  First exhibited on 26 October 1971, in the legendary retrospective of Francis Bacon’s work at the Grand Palais in Paris,Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 was executed six months earlier in April 1971. The painting represents the first and only time in his oeuvre that Bacon united his two greatest obsessions: the Pope and George Dyer – his great muse and lover. The canvas became a tragic premonition of Dyer’s fateful end when, less than thirty-six hours before the opening of the career-defining exhibition, Dyer was found dead. Acquired by the family of the present owner in 1973 this work has appeared in all the major publications dedicated to Bacon’s work but never exhibited publicly. Francis Bacon’sStudy of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 will come to auction as the centerpiece of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 6 October 2017 and will be on view at Christie’s King Street from 30 September.

Sotheby’s Solo Imp-Mod Sale in London = £148.9m

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(Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby's)

This recap of Sotheby's London Impressionist and Modern sales is available to AMMpro subscribers. The first month subscription is free. You can cancel AMMpro at any time.

Sotheby's hybrid Evening sale of small works and Impressionist and Modern masterworks was an uneven success with some real surprises as the two sales tallied £127.9m for the Impressionist and Modern sale + £20.9m for Actual Size, the small works sale or £148.9m ($187.7m) combined. On a hammer basis, Actual Size failed to reach the low estimate while the Impressionist and Modern sale just reached the low estimate. The sell-through rates were 65% and 74% respectively for Actual Size and the Imp-Mod sale.

These numbers may reflect the state of estimates—especially when they are undergirded by actual buyers who took positions pre-sale with irrevocable bides—which are quite high and require a fair bit of work for the specialists to rally bidding interest. With estimates peaking, there are two likely outcomes for the category (Impressionist and Modern works, not small ones.)

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Christie’s Has $32m Picasso Marie-Thérèse Portrait for June

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Christie’s has a portrait of Marie-Thérèse for the June Impressionist and Modern sales in London:

Pablo Picasso’s tender portrait Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) (1934, estimate: £25-40m) will be a leading highlight of Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, in London on 27 June 2017 as part of 20th Century at Christie’s, a series of sales that take place from 17 to 30 June 2017. Painted on 26 March 1934, Pablo Picasso’s Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) is a joyous, colour-filled and deeply personal portrayal of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young, blond-haired woman who, when she entered the artist’s life in January 1927, influenced the course of his art in an unprecedented manner. Femme écrivant is one of the greatest portraits of Marie-Thérèse, a radiant and intimate depiction of Picasso’s lover, which, along with the preceding paintings of the early 1930s, epitomises one of the finest phases in the artist’s career. The painting will be on view in Hong Kong from 5 to 9 of June 2017 before being exhibited in London from 17 to 27 June 2017.

Sotheby’s Announces £15m Kandinsky Murnau Painting for London

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Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau – Landschaft mit grünem Haus, oil on board, 1909 (est. £15-25 million)

Sotheby’s has announced that it will be selling a Kandinsky from the period when he was painting in Murnau, another work from that time was sold five years ago to set a record for the artist. The Murnau works are prized for several reasons. Among them is that the paintings mark Kandinsky’s transition from figurative painting towards abstraction. The work on offer, Murnau – Landschaft mit grünem Haus has an estimate of £15-25 million. It has been held in the sam family for nearly a century and is likely to be one of the last of these works still in private hands (as the auction houses love to intimate.) Until recently, this painting was on long-term loan to the the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and a smaller version of it is in the Hermitage collection in St. Petersburg.

Here’s Sotheby’s release:Continue Reading

Artelligence Podcast: David Norman on London Imp-Mod Sales

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David Norman looks at the results of the March 2017 auctions of Impressionist and Modern art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. The surprisingly strong sales came in the context of a nervous art market wondering what the future might hold.

In part because of that uncertainty, few of the works on offer were considered the kinds of trophies that would motivate bidders to aggressively pursue these works. Nonetheless, they did. Buyers, especially from Asia, were out in force.

Although, as Norman points out, the bidding was tactical and sober. Buyers are keen on acquiring works of art but not at any price.

With that in mind, Norman follows up on the previous sales of many of the works and points out that very few of the works auctioned in this March cycle lacked market exposure. Some did well against previous prices; others fared poorly. But the market showed that it could distribute familiar material efficiently and with strong prices even if the sales lacked an estate or other fresh material that might excite “animal spirits.”

Listen Here>>>>

London March 2017 Impressionist & Modern Analysis

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London February Imp-Mod Evening Sales Charts, February 2013-This analysis of sales results—including a list of the most sought after lots and a look at the internal dynamics of the 'middle market'—is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

For all of the talk about how the Impressionist & Modern (and Surrealism) market is drying up and will soon be like the Old Master market—the occasional astonishing price for a long-held masterpiece punctuating wholesale-like distribution sales of artists known only to a few connoisseurs—the sales in London were demonstration of strength. The sales totals were very strong with combined sell-through rates of 80% which breaks down to nearly 89% across the Evening sales and a 78% for the Day sales. (These figures are for Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonhams Impressionist and Modern sales  + Sotheby's and Christie's Surrealism sales.)

London IM 317 Charts.005

Even with the Klimt painting making nearly £48m, there was an absence of trophy lots that would drive the top of the market. Taken together, the top ten lots accounted for 44% of the sales total which is a relatively small proportion for a market that is supposedly driven by a few trophy lots.

As you can see from the chart that opens this report, the Evening sales merely recovered to the level of 2014 and 2015. But the day sales were stronger than 2016 but weaker than any of the other three years in the five-year cohort. We'll get to a closer look at the top lots in the day sales further down in this report. But when we do get there, the charts will show surprisingly strong day sale results.

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