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Top art sales in 2010

Source: Telegraph

£68 million

Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust

Christie’s, New York, May 4

One of a series of highly prized, intimate portraits Picasso painted in 1932 of his lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, this painting was always going to fly.
Four years ago, another example from the series, Le Rêve, was about to be
sold for $139m (£88m) when its owner, Steve Wynn, stuck his elbow through it
by mistake. With a recession-friendly $70m to $90m (£44-£57m) estimate, this
one sold to an anonymous buyer for $106.5m (£68m) – a record for any work of
art at auction, proving that, even in hard times, the very rich will put
their money into great art.

£65 million

Giacometti, Walking Man 1

Sotheby’s, London, Feb 3

Estimated at £12m to £18m, this was the work that set the season alight, sparking a lengthy bidding battle before selling to a telephone bidder,
later identified as the Brazilian billionaire Lily Safra, to whose Belgravia
address it was reportedly delivered.

£51.6 million

Chinese vase

Bainbridge Auctioneers, Ruislip, Nov 11

Discovered in Pinner, north-west London, this rare, flashily decorated porcelain vase, probably made for a palace of the Emperor Qianlong in the
18th century, epitomised the taste of China’s new rich and attracted Chinese
dealers who drove the price to a record for any Chinese work of art.

£39 million

Andy Warhol, Men in Her Life

Phillips de Pury & Co, New York, Nov 8

Experts are puzzling how this painting, the most expensive in New York’s recent contemporary art sales, made more than Warhol’s trademark soup can
paintings in the same week of sales.

£29.7 million

J M W Turner, Modern Rome — Campo Vecchio

Sotheby’s, London, July 7

The flow of treasures from Britain’s stately homes continued unabated when this painting, from the collection of the Earl of Rosebery, sold for an
artist’s record to the J Paul Getty Museum.

£22 million

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Finding of Moses

Sotheby’s, New York, Nov 4

Highly prized when painted in 1904 but rejected when offered for nothing to British museums in the Sixties, this painting bounced back to fetch an
astonishing record, 10 times its estimate, selling to a Middle Eastern buyer.

£2.4 million

John Robert Cozens, The Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo

Sotheby’s, London, July 14

The star lot from a collection formed by fertility doctor, Prof Ian Craft, this moody panorama saw Canadian media tycoon, David Thomson, pay a
quadruple estimate, record price to see off the competition.

£2.3 million

Frank Auerbach, Mornington Crescent — Summer Morning

Sotheby’s, London, June 28

Auerbach, who will be 80 next year, has been enjoying a recession-proof price boom and this was his highest price to date.

£692,000

Rubens?, Portrait of a Bearded Man

Bonham’s, London, April 28

Catalogued as a 19th-century painting in the “manner of Rubens” with a £1,500 estimate, this sold to dealer Philip Mould, who believed it to be a genuine
Rubens but has yet to exhibit it as such.

£187,250

Ged Quinn,

Jonestown Radio

Sotheby’s, London, Oct 15

A good investment by White Cube gallery’s Jay Jopling, who bought it for about £20,000 in 2005, this was only the third painting by the 47-year-old Briton
to appear at auction. It sold to an Asian buyer whom Sotheby’s said had
never heard of Quinn before this sale.

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