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By James Tarmy
(Bloomberg) — The first gut-punch of a painting at Christie’s Paul Allen evening sale arrives via lot 6—an exquisite pointillist seascape by Paul Signac, which carries an estimate of $28 million to $35 million.
Two lots later, that Signac might begin to feel positively affordable.
Lot 8 in the billion-dollar auction of the late Microsoft co-founder’s estate is a small, 1888 oil on canvas by Georges Seurat, Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version), which carries a presale estimate of $100 million. At 15.5 inches high and 19.75 inches wide, it is indeed petite: The cost would be about $326,664 per square inch.
After that, the wild numbers come fast and furious: There’s a Gauguin for $90 million; a Cezanne for $120 million; a Klimt for $90 million; a van Gogh for $100 million; a Lucian Freud for $75 million; a Manet for $45 million to $65 million; a Monet for $60 million. In between are comparatively minor artworks—a Georgia O’Keeffe for a mere $6 million to $8 million—as palate cleansers.
All told there are 60 lots, which carry an overall estimate of $1 billion to $1.38 billion. (The following day comes a second sale with lower-priced works from Allen’s collection, with a total estimate of $58 million to $87 million.) The auction begins at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and will likely take about two hours, so bidders can make their 9 p.m. dinner reservations.
About 300 candidates
This assumes, of course, that there will be bidders. Any mere billionaire can buy a $10 million painting. But how many are liquid enough to spend $100 million? And how many actually want to?
Consider Robert Ng, number 500 (out of 500) on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of late Nov. 3. Ng is worth an enviable $4.52 billion. Of that fortune though, he has only an estimated $150 million in cash, meaning that if the Seurat sells for its estimate, it would represent roughly two thirds of his available liquid assets.
Jumping up to #206 on the Bloomberg Billionaires list is Ned Johnson IV, heir to the Fidelity Investments fortune, whose Nov. 3 net worth stands at just under $8.8 billion. His cash holdings are estimated to be just $100 million, according to Bloomberg. Can someone that rich buy whatever they’d like, no matter how much cash is on hand? Probably. And yet the most expensive paintings in the Paul Allen sale would likely represent a substantial piece of his available wealth.
Dealers who cater to ultrahigh net worth clients say the demand is there. The dealer Christophe Van de Weghe estimates that there are roughly 300 total candidates for a $120 million painting. “But who will bid is a different story,” he says.
Still, he continues, he’s not worried about depth of interest, even for the Allen sale’s most expensive lots.
“We’ve seen over and over again, when you’re dealing with quality, you always have enough billionaires to buy,” he says. He’ll be bidding on “at least” six or seven of the Allen sale’s lots for himself or on behalf of clients. “A lot of these paintings you just don’t find on the market anymore,” he adds. “I think the estimates on most of those pictures are relatively cheap and priced to sell—I know the numbers might appear to be very high to an average person.”
And what of the fact that the world’s richest people have lost about $1.6 trillion in 2022? “If you’re talking about the hedge fund guys, a lot of them are not doing well this year,” Van de Weghe says. “Fine. But how are they doing in Saudi Arabia? And you have European billionaires who are very strong.” It’s still the case, he says, “that a lot of people need to have those pictures. That’s the reality.”
The dealer Daniella Luxembourg, whose Luxembourg + Co. has spaces in London and New York, says she has clients who might bid on several of the Allen sale’s lots. “The fact is that money and great works of art do not exist equally,” she says. “It’s not only about the sum of money. It’s more about the rarity and quality of the object,” she continues, adding, “in the modern era of auctions, I cannot remember a work of art that was very good that didn’t sell.”
Some nuance
Not every artwork in the sale, dealers say, is as coveted as the next.
“There are buyers who are prepared to go the extra mile for something they feel they might not have the opportunity to have again,” says Richard Nagy, whose London gallery specializes in Klimt and German and Austrian modernism. “That applies to quite a lot of these pictures, but not all.” Even that exquisite Seurat, he says, might not appeal to everyone’s taste. “It’s small, and the world seems to be full of people for whom size is very important.”
Several of Nagy’s clients have expressed interest in multiple lots, “but at this point I can’t tell you whether it means I’ll be bidding or not,” he says.
There seems to be consensus among dealers that the Freud, Cezanne and Klimt are shoo-ins to soar above estimate. “The Freud, I think, is going to fly,” says Nagy. The Klimt, he adds, “will make a record price.”
It boils down, Luxembourg says, to a question of supply and demand.
“More and more works are bought by private people but end up in public museums, so you have less and less accessibility to great works of museum quality,” she says. “So will these works become cheaper? Definitely not.”
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