Conservative pricing at Bonhams and Christie’s—aimed at the middle market rather than the top end—produced two solid contemporary sales on 11 February.
Of London’s four major auction houses, Bonhams was the only one to meet expectations, bringing in a record total of £5.3m or £6.4m with buyer’s premium against an estimate of £4.5m to £6.3m. The sell-through rate was 79.2%.
Despite being listed as lot number 49 in the catalogue, an electric chair silkscreen by Andy Warhol (est £4m-£6m) was in fact offered in a separate single lot sale, although it failed to find a buyer. “It was an agreement with the consignor so it could be in a separate catalogue,” said Ralph Taylor, the director of post-war and contemporary art at Bonhams.
Contrary to sales earlier in the week at Phillips and Sotheby's where estimates punched above their weight, at Bonhams almost three quarters of works sold within or above estimate. Of the 38 lots sold, 42% of lots were within estimate and 32% went over their high estimate; 26% failed to meet or just scraped their low estimate.
Works that climbed over estimate included a bottle top installation by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, which sold for £670,000 (£806,500 with premium; est £450,000-£550,000), and Frank Auerbach’s E.O.W. on her Blue Eiderdown V (1963), which sold to Offer Waterman for £1.75m (£2m with premium; est £1m-£1.5m). Incidentally, the painting fetched almost the same as last year’s entire £1.9m sale (£2.3m with premium).
Despite a concerted effort by Bonhams to raise the profile of the five women artists in the auction, they made a meagre £119,000, just 2.2% of the £5.3m total. A grim reminder of where women artists stand in the market today, Germaine Richier’s apocalyptic bronze horse sculpture was bought in at £190,000, just shy of its £200,000 low estimate.
In a week of tumbling stock markets, Christie’s approached its sale “with a cautious mind”, according to Francis Outred, the auction house’s European head of post-war and contemporary art, pricing lots with the middle market in mind. The average value of works this year was £1.1m compared with £2.1m in 2015 and £3.1m in 2014.
But lowering expectations did not help Christie’s meet its estimate of £50.1m to £74.9m. The sale made £49.8m, £58.2m with premium, with 89% sold by lot. The result was half of that last February. Of the 54 lots sold, 32% fell within estimate and 36% went over estimate, while 32% failed to meet or just touched their low estimate.
British artists led the sale, accounting for seven of the top ten prices. Modestly valued works by artists such as David Hockney did particularly well. Beach Umbrella (1971), painted after the artist’s partner Peter Schlesinger left him, attracted six bidders, selling to Gagosian Gallery for £2.7m (£3.1m, est £1m-£1.5m).
The London dealer Nick Maclean, who bought a portrait of Man Ray by Warhol for a client and an acrylic by Heinz Mack, described the auction as “very solid”, noting that the three collections (from Anita and Arthur Kahn, Marc and Frederique Corbiau and Miles and Shirley Fiterman) were a major factor in the result.
After the sale, Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie’s global president, downplayed talk of a correction in the market. “If there’s a correction it tends to be quite dramatic,” he said. “There’s been a consistency that goes against some of what has been said recently.”