Luxury Lifestyle, Design & Architecture blog

English : Drizzle and union protesters couldn’t dampen the spirits at Sotheby’s historic Impressionist and modern auction this evening, where auctioneer Tobias Meyer brought in an impressive sum of $330.6 million with buyer’s premium. The amount marked the house’s second-highest total ever, which was bolstered by the sale of the last Edvard Munch "Scream" not in a museum to a telephone bidder for $119.9 million . Of the 76 lots on offer, 15 went unsold, a solid sell-through rate of 80 percent by lot. Forty-seven of the lots sold within or over their pre-sale estimates, and the Munch marked the only artist record set. That $330.6 million sum was on the high end of the sale’s $246.3-$323.4 million estimate. The Munch represented about a third of that total. The house was packed, and included plenty of cameramen and journalists of all stripes eager for the sale of the historic painting, which was estimated to sell for around $80 million. “Well, there are only a few pe...

This is a big week for auctions. What else can you say when you have a Picasso and a Gauguin going under the hammer in the same city in the same week? Art collectors have certainly been following the auction scene in London over the past few days. Many have had eyes only for the Picasso that sold for £25.2 million at Sotheby’s on 8 February. The masterpiece in question is ‘ La Lecture ‘, a portrait of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Therese Walter. There is a romantic story about how the pair met. Picasso apparently fell for Walter outside a Metro station in Paris in 1927. Walter was just 17 when the artist took her arm and promised, “You and I are going to do great things together!” The middle-aged Picasso was very much married at the time. Yet, Walter went along with it, becoming not just his mistress, but also his muse. In 1932, Pablo Picasso painted ‘La Lecture’. But it was hardly the only portrait of his muse. Also in 1932, he painted ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’ – a paint...