Art Market Monitor

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Christie’s Rebecca Wei Telegraphs Chinese Rockefeller Interest

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Bloomberg previews the Rockefeller sales this week with a teaser article about the online sales action but the most interesting part of the piece is the way it ends with Christie’s Rebecca Wei outlining the tastes of her Chinese clients. It’s rare to see a Senior figure at an auction house say something anything but upbeat about one the top lots coming up for auction. But in the case of Gertrude Stein’s Picasso, there may be no need for caution. There’s been a lot of talk in the trade, some of it coming from the owner of a number of Picassos that the Rose period Picasso could sell for a great deal more than the $100m low estimate.

That interest is likely to come from buyers in the Gulf States or the owner a private museum than from Chinese clients. Christie’s Rebecca Wei explains why:

“The big whale clients want the top-top pieces only by Tier 1 artists,” said Wei, listing Picasso, Matisse, Claude Monet, van Gogh, Gauguin and Paul Cezanne. “They like bright colors. Women need to be beautiful in the paintings.”

Top on their list, she said, is a sensual 1923 Matisse canvas, “Odalisque couchee aux magnolias.” Estimated at $70 million, it will probably set an auction record for the French artist, whose current high is $48.8 million.

Picasso’s 1905 “Young Girl with a Flower Basket,” which depicts a pale, nude teenage girl with a basket of red blossoms, may be a tougher sell, Wei said.

“I had so many top collectors looking at the piece, saying ‘Mmm… I don’t know, she has a haunted look — I like the Matisse much better.’”

Rockefeller Trove Ignites a Frenzy With $26,000 Money Clip  (Bloomberg)

The Estimates on David Rockefeller’s Art Go Up

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James Tarmy has an interesting story on Bloomberg about the Rockefeller estate which will come to market at Christie’s over the next few months. David Rockefeller had a good eye and a keen trading sense. As Tarmy points out, the success of Rockefeller’s Rothko sold at the pre-credit crisis peak of the market for $73m was bought for $10,000 53 years earlier.

The capital gains on that sale caused Rockefeller to make plans to dispose of his art in a way that would maximize the value to charity. The subsequent competition between auction houses became legend within the industry. Rockefeller’s representatives were the toughest of customers. They drove a very hard bargain which has left some bruised feelings even years later.

No one can confirm the final guarantee level (and it is said to include a toggle that gives the estate an additional advantage) but $750m is a safe number to work with on what the estate was expected to generate.

That’s a big number even for Rockefeller. Christie’s approached the market gingerly. In January, some of the top works—Picasso, Matisse and Monet—were released to the press with estimates of $70m, $50m and $35m respectively. Since then, Christie’s has clearly gotten good feedback from the market as it tours the works to Asia and Europe.Continue Reading

Matisse v Diebenkorn

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matisse-diebenkornIn Baltimore for a little longer before moving to San Francisco, the show “Matisse/Diebenkorn” has 56 works by Diebenkorn and 36 by Matisse. The show follows Diebenkorn’s interest in Matisse:Continue Reading

Dutch Museums Identify Looted Works

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Matisse, Odalisque Stedelijk museum

The AP reports that the Dutch have completed a review of their museums and found 139 works that it suspects might not have clear title and 61 works that were taken from 20 individuals:

The major review of all museum collections in the country found art that had either dubious or definitely suspect origins.

“These objects are either thought or known to have been looted, confiscated or sold under duress,” said Siebe Weide, director of the Netherlands Museums Association. He said returning them is “both a moral obligation and one that we have taken upon ourselves.”

The review also listed the names of 20 people whom the museums said definitely had 61 pieces of art taken from them. The museums said they were getting in contact with or seeking their heirs, including the heirs of Jewish art dealer Albert Stern, the deceased owner of the Matisse.

The museum purchased the painting from Lieuwe Bangma family in 1941, but Stern was its owner before the war and the Bangma family is known to have given shelter to his granddaughter during the war. […]

Among the objects found were 69 paintings, including French painter Henri Matisse’s 1921 “Odalisque”painting of a half-nude reclining woman at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk museum, one of the country’s top tourist draws.

Other paintings included works by old Dutch masters such as Jacob Gerkitsz Cuyp, Impressionist Isaac Israels and modernists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. Other objects uncovered in the investigation included drawings, sculptures, antiquities and Jewish ceremonial objects.

Dutch Museums Identify 139 Likely Nazi Looted Works (APNews)

Derain’s Matisse Leads Christie’s May NY Sale

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Derain_Madame Matisse au kimono

Carol Vogel got some early Spring auction announcements today with this work starring Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Sale:

Christie’s Impressionist and modern art auction on May 8 will feature another historically significant canvas: “Madame Matisse au Kimono,” a 1905 portrait by André Derain, the Fauve painter. Better known for his sun-dappled landscapes than his portraits, he made this work during the first of two summers he spent with Henri Matisse in Collioure, a French Mediterranean fishing village near Spain where they painted side by side. That was the mythical summer right before the Salon d’Automne of 1905, when the public was outraged by these artists’ seemingly violent palettes — when colors, as Derain later said, became “like sticks of dynamite.”

A Fascination with Japan (Inside Art/New York Times)

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