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By James Tarmy
(Bloomberg) — In just two and a half hours on Wednesday evening, Christie’s auction house presided over the largest single-owner sale in history.
Drawn from the art collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, just 60 artworks sold for an unprecedented $1.5 billion. The auction carried a presale estimate of $1 billion to $1.38 billion. (The total includes auction house fees known as the buyer’s premium; the estimate does not.) Proceeds from the sale will go to philanthropy, according to executors of Allen’s estate.
As the sale began, the nervous energy in the room was palpable. Certain lots, including paintings by Lucian Freud, Gustav Klimt and Paul Cézanne, were expected to exceed their high estimates, but the spectacular valuations, with several at or above $100 million, guaranteed that there was no such thing as a surefire winner.
The room was packed with emissaries of the very rich. Most of the art dealers and advisers, dressed in a conservative mixture of dark suits and blazers (for men and women) were there to bid on behalf of their clients. Similarly, two phone banks of auction house specialists flanked the room; over the course of the evening, these specialists called up collectors who’d expressed interest in different lots and then bid on their behalf as the potential buyers listened and gave their assent to any higher bids. In keeping with a trend in recent years, few if any actual collectors were on the sales floor. To be seen visibly bidding, it seems, is now a form of indiscretion reserved for those in the trade.
Setting the tone
The first major work set the tone for the rest of the evening, with sustained bidding from multiple collectors, even at the highest tier.
A tiny pointillist painting by Georges Seurat was the seventh lot to hit the auction block. Carrying an estimate of $100 million, the auctioneer Adrien Meyer began bidding at $75 million. After phone bidders pushed the price up in increments that ranged from $5 million to $1 million, the hammer price came down at $130 million; with fees, its total came to $149.4 million.
Other standout results included a painting by Gauguin estimated at $90 million, which sold for $105.7 million; a landscape by van Gogh carried a presale estimate of $100 million but ended up blowing past expectations to sell for $117.2 million; and the second-biggest lot of the sale by value, a rare landscape by Cézanne that carried a presale estimate of $120 million, sold for $137.8 million.
Almost exactly halfway through the sale, the auction total had officially reached $1 billion.
“It’s such a carefully crafted collection,” says Nanne Dekking, the founder and CEO of Artory, speaking after the auction. “Everything already had a proven track record. These weren’t the most gutsy or risky acquisitions, these were artists who are already bought by other people for substantial amounts of money.” The final result, he continues, “is incredible, but it’s also to be expected.”
Records broken
The night had a series of firsts. Most important, Allen’s collection became the most valuable collection to ever sell publicly, easily surpassing a record set earlier this year by Harry and Linda Macklowe, who, as a condition of their contentious divorce, sold their collection of 65 artworks for $922 million over two auctions. That, in turn, had bested the previous record set in 2018, when a series of auctions from the estate of Peggy and David Rockefeller totaled $835 million.
As the hammer came down on the final lot, a painting of a cafe cart by the artist Wayne Thiebaud, the night’s second auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen breathed an audible sigh of relief. Works by Freud, Klimt, Cézanne, and Gauguin, along with several others, became the most expensive ever by their respective artists to sell publicly. “It’s been an historic sale, so thank you for joining us,” Pylkkänen said as the room burst into applause. “Well done.”
On Thursday, a much smaller auction from Allen’s collection, with 95 lower-priced lots, is estimated to total between $58 million and $87 million.
Read also:
- Auction of Paul Allen’s collection will test billionaires’ buying power
- Why do we give out these confounding book awards each year?
- Evolving tech world mourns Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder
