Sotheby’s sold $303.9 million worth of modern art in New York on Tuesday, in a solid if lackluster affair that included an auction record for a painted bottle.
Titled Femme-bouteille, the bottle in question was painted by René Magritte in 1955 with a female nude across its surface. The work was part of the collection of Sybil Shainwald, a female health lawyer who died last year.
It was one of the more unusual objects in the auction, which was led by more traditional works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh.
While Christie’s $1.1 billion night on Monday was dominated by blockbuster lots from the mega collections of S.I. Newhouse and Agnes Gund, Sotheby’s leaned into smaller estates, with fresh, conservatively priced material that drew steady bidding.
René Magritte’s Femme-bouteille (1955) sold for $974,000 on an estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
The sale’s total was a 63 percent increase from that of a similar auction a year ago and squarely within its $242 million to $320.2 million estimate. With most works backed by irrevocable bids and two lots withdrawn, only one work failed to sell during the auction, resulting in a 97.6 percent sell-through rate.
The top lot was La Chaise Lorraine (circa 1919) by Matisse, a painting of a wooden chair holding a plate with three peaches. It fetched $48.4 million, surpassing its $25 million estimate. The painting came from the Barbier-Mueller Collection, where it had remained for decades.
Picasso’s Arlequin (Buste), from the collection of Adele and Enrico Donati, sold for $42.6 million, in line with its presale estimate.
An 1888 Van Gogh drawing, La Moisson en Provence, consigned anonymously by California collector Greg Renker, went for $29.4 million, also within its estimate of $25 million to $35 million. (Final prices include fees, estimates don’t.)
“Collectors are out on the prowl,” said Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art. “When they are engaged, and excited, and stimulated, you get great prices.”
The art trade hopes there will be a few art lovers among the newly minted billionaires created by the upcoming IPO’s of SpaceX, OpenAi, and Anthropic. “Even one person can move the market,” Dawes said.
Pablo Picasso’s Arlequin (Buste), 1909, sold for $42.6 million. Courtesy Sotheby’s
Asian collectors helped fuel bidding for works by 10 artists, including Rothko, Klee, O’Keeffe, Chagall, Tanguy, Schiele, and Picasso, Sotheby’s said.
One 30-something collector purchased Edgar Degas’s Femme à sa toilette (1894) for $4.3 million, below its low estimate of $5 million. Another was the underbidder for Alberto Giacometti’s bronze Annette d’après nature (1954), which finished at $8.05 million, surpassing a high estimate of $7 million.
Modern art is attracting new collectors in their 50s and 60s who are comfortable spending $5 million to $20 million, Dawes said. They are drawn to Surrealism, as well as modernist stalwarts like Picasso, Matisse, and Van Gogh.
“You’d be surprised how many people are entering at that level,” he said. “They are not celebrities. They are not nepo babies. They are just people who are becoming billionaires and centimillionaires.”
The Sotheby’s auction concluded a busy day that started with day sales at Christie’s and Phillips, as well as a white-glove Phillips’s evening sale of modern and contemporary art that totaled $115.2 million, a solid increase over last year’s result.
“It is a big week,” said Lock Kresler, senior director of Helly Nahmad Gallery in London. “Between the three houses, there’s a lot of art to sell. But they are doing it—and they are doing it well.”