Sotheby’s kicked off the November marquee auction season yesterday (18 November) with a double header. The evening began with the white glove, single-owner collection sale of the late beauty product mogul and philanthropist Sydell Miller, billed as “A Legacy of Beauty”, before moving onto its Modern sale, which yielded more tepid results.
The 49 lots sold across both sales brought in a total of $268.6m ($309m with fees). Sotheby's press office states this is an "over 30%" increase from last year's results, but this calculation appears to only take into account the Modern evening sale it held in November 2023, which netted $190m ($223.6m with fees) from 33 lots. Factoring in Sotheby's November 2023 evening sale from the Emily Fisher Landau collection, which made $351.6m ($406.4m with fees), tonight's total represents a 42.9% drop from the $541.9m (with fees) the house made over those two 2023 sales.
The Sydell Miller sale realised $189.5m ($215.9m with fees) from 25 lots, falling midway between the pre-sale estimate of $170m to $205m (all estimates are calculated without fees). Seven lots were backed by third-party guarantees.
The sale got off to a flying start thanks to Edgar Degas’s graceful bronze dancer, Great arabesque, third beat from a 1919 cast, that made $1.3m ($1.6m with fees) against an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000.
Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s Troupeau d’Éléphants dans les Arbres table from 2001
Courtesy of Sotheby's
There was great ardour for some of the sale's richly decorative offerings, including Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s extraordinary Troupeau d’Éléphants dans les Arbres table from 2001. This cluster of sculpted elephants, cast in gold, patinated bronze and glass, was acquired directly from the artist via the super decorator-architect Peter Marino and once graced Miller’s ocean front Palm Beach mansion La Rèverie. It fetched $10m ($11.6m with fees), against an estimate of $4m to $6m.
Yves Klein’s iconic Untitled Blue Sponge Relief (RE 28) (1961), comprised of dry pigment in the artist’s patented Yves Klein Blue (YKB) hue and synthetic resin, natural sponges and pebbles on panel, floated to $13.4m ($14.2m with fees) against an $8m to $12m estimate. The New York private dealer Andrew Fabricant was the successful bidder; the Klein came to market backed by an irrevocable bid.
Five bidders chased Henri Matisse’s striking Jeune fille en robe rose (1942) to $8.3m ($9.7 with fees). Reaching higher still was Pablo Picasso’s neoclassical period La Statuaire (1925), featuring a woman sculptor seated in front of her white male bust creation, which realised $22m ($24.8m with fees) against an unpublished estimate in the region of $30m. The adviser Patti Wong was the underbidder. Miller acquired it for $11.8m (with fees) at Sotheby's in November 1999, where it was the featured cover lot from the Eleanore and Daniel Saidenberg single owner sale.
Another Picasso, Tête de femme (Francoise), a bronze found object from 1951 and cast in an edition of two, celebrating his relationship with his young muse Francois Gilot, brought a tame $5.75m ($6.9m with fees) against an estimate of $7m to $10m. In sharp contrast to the figurative lines of the Picassos, Wassily Kandinsky’s dynamic abstraction Weisses Oval (White Oval, 1921), which was acquired by Miller in 2000 from Landau Fine Art in Montreal, made $19.1m ($21.6m with fees). It came backed by an irrevocable bid.
Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1914-17)
Courtesy of Sotheby's
The celebrated topper of the evening was Claude Monet’s lushly hued and swirling painting from his famed late Giverny series Nymphéas (1914-17). Grandly scaled at 175cm by 136cm, it hammered at $59m, to make $65.5m with fees, going to an Asian bidder via Sotheby's Asia deputy chair Jen Hua. The lot's unpublished estimate was in the region of $60m. Monet's signature was stamped, which meant it never left his studio in his lifetime, and in some connoisseur quarters that may have lessened its attraction. Luckily for Sotheby's—and Miller's heirs—the rarity of the object trumped that conceit.
“This was just a kicker,” said David Norman, the former Sotheby’s specialist who brought the Miller bounty to Sotheby’s. “It was her story and the way Sotheby’s put it together that stamped an imprimatur on the sale.”
After a brief intermission and change of auctioneers at the firm’s York Avenue salesroom, the Modern evening sale of 33 lots jogged to the finish line at a slower pace and delivered a more laboured result $79.1m ($92.9 with fees). The tally registered shy of the pre-sale expectations, pegged at $92.3m to $135m, after two lots were withdrawn at the 11th hour. Seven of the 31 lots offered failed to sell, resulting in a strained buy-in rate by lot of 25.6%.
Twelve lots came to market backed by house guarantees and a further 12 had third-party guarantees, according to Sotheby’s. One record was made in this sale, for a Tiffany Studios glass work.
A trio of women Surrealist artists sparked some of the early action with Remedios Varo’s fantasy figure of a bicycle bodied woman, Los caminos tortuosos (1958) in gouache, brush and ink and charcoal on card that brought $1.7m ($2m with fees). And Leonora Carrington’s statuesque La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman, 1951) in oil on wood, standing at 200cm high, sold to the Argentine collector Eduardo Costantini, and founder of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, for $9.8m ($11.3m with fees) against an estimate of $5m to $7m. It made the auction record for a sculpture by Carrington. Lastly, Leonor Fini’s pantheon of goddesses, Les Stylites (The Stylists, 1976) rose to $600,000 ($720,000 with fees).
The femme fatale theme continued with Picasso’s colourful and charged Buste de femme (1949), depicting the noble visage of Gilot, which sold for $8.5m ($9.9m with fees), against an estimate of $9m to $12m. The esteemed and late Chicago collector Morton G. Neumann, who was Picasso’s favorite American buyer, acquired the painting in 1951 and the Neumann family are the consignors.
Franz Marc, Das Lange Gelbe Pferd (1913)
Courtesy of Sotheby's
A major disappointment last night was Franz Marc's rare to auction Das Lange Gelbe Pferd (The Long Yellow Horse, 1913), standing tall against a symbolic, rainbow-saturated sky and at one time housed in the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was bought in from a chandelier bid of $3.6m against an estimate of $8m to $12m. Luckily for the house, the work was not guaranteed.
A similar and more expensive fate awaited Henri Matisse’s guaranteed nude odalisque, Torse de jeune fille (1921-22) that failed to sell at $11.5m against a $12m to $18m estimate.
Alberto Giacometti’s recognisable Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego), a bronze from a 1954 cast featuring the familiar head of his brother Diego, made $11.5m ($13.2m with fees), within its $10 to 15m estimate. It was sold by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, of the eponymous diplomat and aviator founder.
Of the relatively scarce entries of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, the shimmering and mosaic-like painting by Paul Signac, Antibes, La Pointe de Bacon (1917) went for $8.5m ($9.9m with fees), above its $6m to $8m estimate.
As an outlier to the European dominated entries, The Danner Memorial Window from Tiffany Studios, grandly scaled in leaded Favrile glass at 4.8 metres and dated to 1913, brought a record $10.8m ($12.4m with fees). It last sold at Christie’s New York in 2000 for $1.9m. Late in the sale, a second Surrealist work by Carrington, Temple of the Word (1954) sold to a bidder at the front of the sales room for $3.8m ($4.5m with fees). “I live in Switzerland,” said the buyer of that Carrington, “and I love my privacy”.
The evening action resumes tonight at Christie’s with the hotly anticipated single-owner collection of Mica Ertegun.