These were dire times for Sotheby’s.Ī few months earlier, Sotheby’s had put a record $515 million guarantee on a sale of the estate of the company’s former chairman A. It would have been a bad sale for any auction house, but for a beleaguered one, especially, it was a blow to morale, and if there was no rebound during the post-war and contemporary sale two days later, it could strike another blow-to the company’s share price. More than 20 lots were left unsold, a considerable amount of debris for a May evening sale in New York-and a dismal sell-through rate of 66 percent. In the end, the sale netted only $144.5 million, a full $20 million under the low end of its estimate. After every other lot, Barker repeated, like an incantation, “It’s a pass, it’s a pass, it’s a pass.” The atmosphere in the room turned sour, and bidding slowed. Barker’s serene British lilt betrayed concern, if not anger. Watching the rest of the sale was cringe-inducing, and as one lot after another was left out to dry, collectors streamed out of the room. After almost a full two minutes, he proclaimed it a pass. He hung on to the figure, repeating “twelve-point-five-million,” sometimes softly and sometimes loud, his intonations getting graver, and scanned the room, pulling out all the stops as he wrenched his body forward in a pique of desperation. The auctioneer implored the room full of wealthy collectors to throw him-and Sotheby’s-some mercy. But when Barker opened the bidding for André Derain’s Les Voiles rouges (1906), the proceedings stalled at $12.5 million, well below the work’s $15 million low estimate. Reporters murmured about the catalogue’s bloat and lack of buzzy eight-figure works, as did the few specialists who, before working the sale, stopped by a pub a block away from Sotheby’s, called, appropriately, Murphy’s Law.Īfter some introductory gavel-rapping from Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s cochairman of Europe and the evening’s auctioneer, there came a strong opening salvo: Maurice de Vlaminck’s Sous-Bois (1905) sold for $16.4 million and Paul Signac’s Maisons du port, Saint-Tropez (1892) for $10.7 million, solidly within their pre-sale estimates. There was little fanfare when bidders arrived at Sotheby’s headquarters at 1334 York Avenue May 9 for the auction house’s Impressionist and modern evening sale.
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