‘Hidden’ portrait by Picasso fetches £8 million

The Picasso at auction at Christie's
12 April 2012

A portrait by Pablo Picasso of his second wife and major muse Jacqueline Roque has sold for £8.1 million in another successful London auction with 21 works making more than £1 million.

Tête de femme (Jacqueline), dating from 1963, went to an anonymous telephone bidder for twice its pre-sale estimate at last night's auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surreal art at Christie's.

The work is one of 400 Picasso painted of the woman with whom he spent the last 20 years of his life and had not been seen in public since 1967. It had been in the same collection for nearly 30 years.

The first of this year's big sales raised a total of £76.8 million. This was at the top end of pre-sale expectations of between £54.5 million and £77.8 million.

Strong bidding saw eight of the 10 top lots sell for more than the highest hopes of the experts beforehand.

Four works, led by the Picasso, made more than £5 million and 21 made more than £1 million compared with 26 such sales across all the major auctions combined in London last year.

Giovanni Bertazzoni, a director of Christie's London, said demand remained high and knowledgeable buyers were still committed to
spending.

"The increased confidence of vendors meant that this evening we could feed the appetite of these buyers by offering a greater supply than in recent months," he said.

The auction house looked forward "with great encouragement" to the next big auctions of Impressionist and Modern art in May in New York, he added.

A quarter of the buyers came from the UK and another quarter from the Americas with 48 per cent coming from the rest of Europe. The remaining two per cent were from the growing market of Asia.

While names such as Picasso have become a must-have on the wish-list of all new international collectors, the results also show new desirable artists.

The Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova broke her own record for a painting by a female artist sold at auction with £6.4 million for the First World War work, Espagnole.

Other highlights of the sale included £3.79 million for Nu aux jambs croisées by Henri Matisse, which came from the same private Swiss collection as the Goncharova, and £3.06 million for Mademoiselle Grimpel au ruban rouge by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The auction season in London continues at Sotheby's tonight.

...And three others paintings that topped £5m

La Gitane circa 1910-1911, by Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968). It sold for £7.01 million, the second highest price for the artist at auction.

Espagnole circa 1916, by Goncharova. At £6.4 million, it set a record price for a painting by a woman artist sold at auction.

Homme Assis Sur Une Chaise 1956, by Picasso, sold for £6.01 million. Painted soon after he moved to a Cannes villa.

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