28/01/2002
by Luisa Vassallo

Christie’s London opens its 2002 auction calendar with the evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on the 4^th of February and the day sale on the 5^th of February. The sales include works by major names such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne and the ever popular Claude Monet, whose Prairie de Limetz is featured as one of the highlights with an estimate of $ 2.81-4.22 million (€ 3.28-4.92 million). Painted in 1888 near his home in Giverny and last exhibited in public in 1889, his oil on canvas, a good example of the artist’s mastery in rendering the effects of light on landscapes and shows his experimentation with Divisionism, apparent in the stippled paint effect in the trees. The same price tag is carried by Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier, the artist’s favourite model. One of the six portraits of the sitter painted in the early 1880s, the painting has been passed down the line of the artist’s heirs and is fresh on the market. Renoir’s Le premier pas follows with a hefty quote of $ 5.63-8.44 million (€ 6.56-9.84 million). This intimate oil, executed in 1876 at the height of the master’s grand scale figurative painting, had once belonged to August Pellerin, the celebrated Parisian collector, and blends a theme of impressionist imprint with a classical arrangement of form. Another significant work on offer is Maisons à Valhermeil vues en direction d’Auvers-sur-Oise by Cézanne, painted in the company of Camille Pissarro and valued at $ 3.94-4.93 million (€ 4.59-5.74 million). The work, once in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, Florida), was painted in 1882 and marked a turning point in the artist’s career and the beginning of his mature period. Elements that characterise his art in the late 1880s and 1890s, such as the search for the underlying form and rhythms of landscapes, are already apparent in this oil. Also included in the sale is the luminous Zwei Pferde, a gouache from 1913 by the leading Blaue Reiter painter Franz Marc, with an estimate of $ 1.41-2.11 million (€ 1.64-2.46 million). As the German Colourist was killed in World War I, his production is limited and seldom appears at auction.

Sotheby’s has also opted to concentrate their major works in an evening sale that will be held on the 5^th of February, presenting an interesting but less impressive selection of works. The top lot is Monet’s 1885 Arbres au bord de l’eau. Printemps a Giverny, estimated at $ 3.52-4.93 million (€ 4.1-5.74 million), another landscape in which the artist investigates reflections of nature on water, creating a tension between the verticals of the trees and the horizontals of the riverbank. Henri Matisse is present with Le 14 Juillet 1920-Etretat 1920, a colourful interior view that captures the festivities for Bastille Day (estimate $ 2.81-4.22 million, € 3.28-4.92 million). Three landscapes by Camille Pissarro, including Paysage d’Automne (oil on canvas) carry estimates ranging between $ 112,000-563,000 (€ 131,000-655,000) while Pierre-Auguste Renoir is represented by two portraits, both estimated at $ 985,000-1,267,000 (€ 1,147,000-1,474,000), the first of which, like his painting offered by Christie’s, depicts a maternal image, even if in this case the work does not have the same degree of finish or of complexity in the composition.

Also featured in the sale is Fernand Léger’s Le Siphon from 1924 (estimate $ 2.11-2.81 million, € 2.46-3.28 million), painted at the height of his career when his work was characterised by a strong illustrative idiom that treats everyday objects monumentally, giving the impression that the images are drawn from the world of advertising. The market for the artist is particularly robust at the moment. His decorative Four Construction Workers on a Yellow Ground from 1950 was sold by Phillips in the Smooke Collection sale in New York on the 5^th of November, 2001 for $ 5.2 million (€ 6 million) against an upper estimate of $ 4 million (€ 6.56 million), while his earlier The motor was in turn sold by Christie’s, New York, in the reserve-free sale of the Gaffé Collection, fetching a record $ 15.2 million (€ 17.7 million). Sotheby’s rounds up the Impressionist and Modern Art sales on the 6^th of February with the second session that gives buyers the opportunity of acquiring less important works with more reasonable quotes. Included in the auction are several works by Paul Signac with estimates ranging between $ 14,000-22,000 (€ 16,000-26,000).

The New York sales of Impressionist and Modern art held in November last year highlighted a certain predilection for Modernist works over the Impressionist masters. It remains to be seen if this trend is confirmed in London or if on those occasions collectors’ choice was guided by the particularly excellent quality of the Modern works on offer, this being the discriminating factor in the determining the success rate of sales, particularly in the current economic climate. The fact that Impressionist and Modern works are being condensed under one umbrella may be an indication that market demand is not particularly fervent. Jussi Pylkkänen, International Director of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s, stated that "the world’s major collectors have expressed their confidence in the European market by consigning a large number of museum quality works." The auctions will prove whether buyers share the same confidence in the market four months after the World Trade Centre tragedy, given the high quality of some of the offerings and the fact that the mid-seasonal sales held in London in October 2001 showed that, even if estimates were not being exceeded, the market was at least holding its own.