The sale of the top lot in the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection started last week at Sotheby's in Hong Kong at HKD 180 million (approximately $23 million). Three bidders (two on the phone, and another in the room) expressed interest in Amedeo Modigliani's Portrait of Paulette Jourdain (1919). The hammer finally fell in favor of the room bidder at HKD 235 million (approximately $30 million), which, including the buyer's premium, resulted in a HKD 273 million sale (around $35 million). This, besides being a lot of money, also set a new auction record for Modigliani in Asia and for a modern Western work of art in general. It did, however, fall somewhat short of expectations.
Related: Significant Modigliani Portrait Tops Sotheby's Hong Kong Auctions
Before the auction, the lot's estimate, although only available on request, was rumored to be in the region of $45 million. This was based on the price achieved at a Sotheby's auction in 2015, when the portrait had fetched $42.8 million.
Other premium lots in the offering met an even more depressing fate and remained unsold, including David Hockney's Picture of a Lion, Zao Wou-Ki's 10.03.78 and Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita's Nu au chat. In total, the auction raised HKD 455 million (approximately $58.1 million), which is just 60% of the predicted lower estimate.
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Still, it was not all doom and gloom and new top prices were achieved in the Asian market for four other Western artists, including René Magritte, with Le miroir universel (sold for HKD 77,575,000, or $9.9 million), and Mark Bradford, with L.A (sold for HKD 29,490,000, or $3.7 million).
Auction expert and Barnebys co-founder Pontus Silfverstolpe commented: "Although several records were broken, the auction was a disappointment not only for the sellers and Sotheby's, but for the entire industry, which does its best to achieve top numbers at the big autumn auctions by creating high expectations around the market's buying power. One must also bear in mind that it is fundamentally more difficult to sell works that have recently come to the market than those top lots that have been in the same collection for decades."
