Christie’s Rockefeller Center salesroom was the setting for a surprisingly competitive evening on Wednesday when six bidders doggedly chased “Le Printemps,” Manet’s 1881 portrait of the actress Jeanne Demarsy in a flowery dress and bonnet. The winner was Otto Naumann, the Manhattan dealer who was in the salesroom on behalf of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, paying $65.1 million, well above the painting’s high estimate of $35 million.
“It’s a beautiful, lovable, captivating painting that I’m sure will be a popular favorite with visitors from around the world,” the museum’s director, Timothy Potts, said by telephone shortly after the gavel fell. “This was one of the last of Manet’s salon paintings still in private hands.”
By adding “Le Printemps” to what the Getty already owns by the artist — two paintings, a watercolor and a pastel — the museum “will now be a major destination for Manet,” Mr. Potts said.
The Christie’s sale was the second Impressionist and modern art evening auction this week, and the Manet bidding, which took place early in the sale, helped fuel high prices for the small auction.
The sale totaled $165.6 million, above its high $157.8 million estimate. Of the 39 works on offer, only four failed to sell. (Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
The results were a surprise even to Christie’s experts who had cobbled together a considerably more modest affair than Sotheby’s auction the previous night, when several highflier works, including Giacometti’s “Chariot,” a 1950 sculpture of a spindly female, sold for $101 million. That sale, along with “Tête,” a Modigliani limestone sculpture from 1911-12 that brought $70.7 million, contributed to Sotheby’s highest auction total ever — $422.1 million. Still, Christie’s managed, for the most part, to sell what it had, and sell it well.
“Remarkably, Sotheby’s launched a pretty happy boat,” said Stephane C. Connery, a private New York dealer. “Coming in second helped Christie’s. The Manet was a great painting and a very desirable one. Overall mood was really strong.”
Giacometti’s allure was also not diminished on Wednesday night. “Stèle II,” a bronze sculpture of a man perched on a high plinth that was conceived in 1958 but cast in 1962, sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $9.9 million, well above its $6.5 million estimate. Another modern work, “Tuilerie à Mont-Roig,” a highly realistic landscape that Miró painted in 1918, which was expected to fetch $5 million to $8 million, brought $8.6 million.
Trying to ride the crest of a trend or topical museum exhibition is critical to auction house experts when they are putting their sales together. With the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s blockbuster exhibition of Leonard A. Lauder’s Cubist collection, which opened just weeks ago, it is little surprise that Christie’s sale on Wednesday night featured a large number of Cubist paintings and drawings.
Among the best of them was Braque’s 1918 painting “Guitare et Rhum,” which was snapped up by Jude Hess, an art adviser, for $4.6 million, above its $3 million estimate. Some Cubist works on paper also brought high prices. Ivor Braka, a London dealer, bought Severini’s pastel from 1912-13, “Etude pour Autoportrait au Canotier,” for $4.7 million, more than three times its $1.5 million estimate. Jennifer Vorbach, a dealer who works with Gurr Johns, outbid five hopefuls for Picasso’s 1913 “Figure,” a collage that Picasso made in 1913 that included blue wallpaper in its composition, paying $4.3 million, well above its $2.5 million high estimate.
There were moments when buyers were being careful, realizing estimates were simply too high. Although Surrealist paintings have been in fashion recently, Magritte’s “Mesdemoiselles de L’Isle Adam,” depicting two naked women in silhouette on a beach, brought $4.9 million, under its low $5 million estimate. Works by Miró and van Gogh also sold well below expected prices, and a Léger, which Christie’s had guaranteed, failed to sell.
The action continues next week when the market for postwar and contemporary art is put to the test.