Christie’s auction of Impressionist and Modern art last night in London proved to be an interesting forecast of the coming year’s art market.
No one could have expected mammoth sales but you know something’s really wrong when you can’t flog a Monet.
But despite a few works not meeting their reserves, and others only just scraping them (a Paul Gauguin painting only just reached its ‘low’ estimate of £2m) there were some success stories of the evening.
A Henry Moore sculpture Reclining Mother and Child sold for £600,000 more than its estimated £2m while a Modigliani exceeded its top estimate of £5.5m by far.
Across town at Sotheby’s a record was broken when a bronze Degas sculpture, The Little Dancer, sold for a cool £13.3m – well over its £9m – £12m estimate.
There are not many of these covetable sculptures around these days– and most other casts have found their homes in museums including the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Musee d’Orsay in Paris.
A solid (bronze) investment!
