LONDON, June 29, 2022 – Following a Jubilee season that has seen an unprecedented 30,000+ visitors attend Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries in London over the past month, tonight’s sales of British Art and Modern & Contemporary Art brought a combined total of £149.2m / $181.8m.
Tonight’s sales were led by Francis Bacon’s magnetic portrait of fellow titan of British art Lucian Freud, which sold for £43.3m / $52.8m, becoming the most valuable work of art sold at auction in London this season. Unseen for over half a century, the painting also became both the most valuable single panel and the most valuable painting by Bacon sold in London.* The work now joins the ranks of the top 10 prices ever achieved for a painting in London, three of which have been set this year.
The total brings Sotheby’s global year-to-date annual sales of Modern and Contemporary Art to $1.83 billion – the second highest in company history.
Sotheby’s summer sales will continue tomorrow with day sales of Modern British (est. £5.2 – 7.7m) and Modern & Contemporary Art (est. £23.8 – 34.7m), and then in July with Old Masters paintings and drawings, as well as our annual ‘Treasures’ auction. They also follow Sotheby’s Paris Summer auction of Contemporary Art which made $20.4m on 8 June, a total nearing the high estimate (€12.8-19.4m).
FACTS & FIGURES FROM TONIGHT’S SALES
- Four works sold for prices in excess of £10 million: Bacon, Monet, Warhol and Richter
- Participants from 40 countries
- 45% of works had never been offered at auction before
- British Art: The Jubilee Auction Sale total: £72.3 million / $88.1 million (est. £73-99.9m). 33 lots offered.
- Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Auction total: £76.8m / $93.5 million (est: £70-101m). 45 lots offered.
FURTHER AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS
On Cloud Nine:
- Having remained with the same family for over half a century, seven participants competed for a charming small-scale cloud study by John Constable, driving the final price to £730,800 / $890,370 – almost 5x its high estimate (est. £100,000-150,000).
- In its first appearance at auction in exactly 20 years, Gerhard Richter’s Study for Clouds realised £11.2m / $13.6m. At once dramatic and atmospheric, the painting was chased by three room bidders and a further four participants via Sotheby’s representatives on the phone for almost nine minutes (est. £6-8m).
Records:
- Once belonging to the collection of the late David Bowie, Frank Auerbach’s Head of Gerda Boehm achieved a record £4.1m / $5.1m (est. £2-3m). The sculptural painting last appeared at auction as part of Sotheby’s London ‘Bowie / Collector’ single-owner sale in 2016, where it made £3.8m, a record for the artist at the time.
- A rare painting titled With Love to Jean-Paul Belmondo by Pauline Boty – the only woman to be part of the British Pop Art movement – brings a record £1.2m / $1.4m (est. £500,000-800,000)
- A record for any Swedish work of art, August Strindberg’s abstract Wave V sold for £6.8m / $8.3m after being pursued by four participants (est. £2-3m).
Women Artists:
- All but one of the works offered by female artists exceeded their high estimates, and together they achieved a total that doubled their collective pre-sale low estimate.
- Bringing together contemporary abstraction with Rococo extravagance, Flora Yukhnovich’s Boucher’s Flesh sold for £2.3m / $2.8m – 10 x its low estimate – after being pursued by six bidders including via a Sotheby’s representative in Hong Kong (est. £200,000-300,000). Sotheby’s now holds the top three prices for the artist at auction, all of which have been set in the last eight months.
- In its auction debut, a double portrait by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye titled Nearer than Kith, Further from Kind realised £1.2m / $1.5m after being chased by bidders in Asia, the US and Europe (est £400,000-600,000). The work was sold to benefit The Vannucci Artist Residency, a programme for emerging artists.
- Winner of the Golden Lion in Venice this year, Simone Leigh’s sculpture Blue/Black, was pursued by five participants, taking the final price to £617,400 / $752,209 (est. £200,000-300,000).
- Christina Quarles’ We Woke in Mourning Jus Tha Sma which sold to a buyer in Asia for £529,200 / $644,751 (est. £350,000-450,000), in its auction debut.
Half of the works by female artists attracted bidding from Asia, as did two works by Paul Klee – Small Seaport and Town Decked with Flags – and Stanley Whitney’s colour grid painting, The Wild West, which was chased by six participants, including two Asian under-bidders, before selling for £906,200 / $1.1m (est. £300,000-400,000).
The top lots of the Modern & Contemporary sale were:
- An Impressionist landscape by Claude Monet, Vétheuil, which made £11.7m / $14.3m (est. £10-15m), and a larger-than-life candy pink Self-Portrait by Andy Warhol, selling for £12.7m / $15.5m (est. £12-18m).
- Portraying one of the earliest incarnations of a motif – the leaf tree – which René Magritte repeatedly returned to throughout his career, La Saveur des larmes, fetched £1.6m / $2m, selling to an online bidder (est. £1.2-1.8m).
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