Painting profits: record sales for Christie's

IRISH ART contributed to record sales at Christie’s International last year.

The privately owned global auction house yesterday announced worldwide sales for 2010 of $5 billion (€3.64 billion) – up by 53 per cent over the previous year.

Christie's, which has offices in 32 countries and 10 salerooms around the world, said a "year of blockbuster sales and record-breaking
results" at fine art auctions had resulted in the highest sales in its 245-year history.

On May 4th in New York, Christie’s sold Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust for $106.5 million establishing, a new world record for any work of art sold at auction.

During the year, the firm sold 606 works of art at auction for more than $1 million. Among them was In Dublin Bay: Portrait of the Artist’s Wife by Sir William Orpen which made $1.3 million at an auction in New York last January – the highest price paid for an Irish painting anywhere in the world last year.

The oil-on-canvas, which dates from 1909, depicts the artist’s wife, Grace, walking at Howth Head. It had been consigned for sale from the estate of Thomas J Carroll, a former Wall Street trader with Irish roots.

In December, also in New York, Christie’s sold a painted wood screen by Eileen Gray, the Enniscorthy, Co Wexford-born architect and furniture designer, for $842,500. Two years ago in Paris, an art deco armchair by her, titled Fauteuil aux Dragons, was sold by Christie’s for €21.9 million – a record price for a piece of 20th-century furniture. It had been in the collection of the late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

Among Irish art sold by Christie’s in London last year was a painting by Jack B Yeats which had been in the collection of the late British novelist Graham Greene. A Horseman Enters a Town at Night fetched £349,250 (€412,000) in November. A painting of Co Meath’s Ward Union Hunt, discovered in the attics at Althorp, the childhood home of the late Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, was sold for £15,000 in July.

Commenting on the results, Steven P. Murphy, the chief executive of Christie’s International, said: “2010 was a record-breaking year and early signs of 2011 indicate that the art market remains buoyant at all levels.”

He also said that 28 per cent of sales were now made to clients bidding via the internet.