Self-Portrait by Picasso Nets $47.85 Million

A brashly youthful self-portrait by Pablo Picasso sold for $47.85 million Tuesday night and became the second most expensive artwork to sell at auction.

The stunning sale of “Yo Picasso,” painted in 1901 when the artist was 20 years old, is topped only by Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” which brought $53.9 million in 1987.

Unidentified telephone bidders in pursuit of the Picasso tried harder than competitors for other artworks and propelled the painting past a Paul Gauguin canvas that was expected to run away with Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and modern art.

The Picasso sale more than doubled the painting’s top estimate of $20 million and swept past the artist’s record of $38.5 million, set last November for “Acrobat and Young Harlequin.”

Wendell Cherry, president of Humana Inc., the hospital management firm based in Louisville, Ky., was the seller of the Picasso. He paid $5.6 million for the 29-inch-by-23 7/8-inch painting in 1981. “The seller is ecstatic. I think he is in shock,” Sotheby’s president, Diana D. Brooks, said.

Pressed for clues to the identity of the buyer, Sotheby’s chairman, John L. Marion, would only say, “He is a wealthy human being.”

The Picasso sale was the high point of a sale of 77 artworks that totaled $204.82 million and set records for 12 artists. Although 10 of the 77 items failed to find buyers, the Tuesday night auction set a record of its own, surpassing that of $117.7 million set in April at Sotheby’s London sale of works from the British Rail Pension Fund.

“Mata Mua,” Gauguin’s verdant fantasy of Tahiti, was expected to be the top lot in the auction, and for awhile it was. The 1892 landscape captured the imagination of the sophisticated art crowd and emptied one unidentified collector’s wallet when it sold for $24.2 million by telephone.

The Gauguin was the most expensive of eight Impressionist paintings offered for sale from the collection of Jaime Ortiz-Patino, an heir to a Bolivian tin fortune. The eight pictures brought a total of $67.8 million, just above the most optimistic estimate of $66.8 million.

“Mata Mua,” a vibrantly colored landscape that bears the stamp of Gauguin’s favorite themes and mature style, depicts native women playing musical instruments and dancing around a monumental statue of the Tahitian moon goddess, Hina. The 34 3/4-inch-by-25 3/4-inch canvas was painted during Gauguin’s first trip to Tahiti, but it reflects more of the artist’s South Pacific fantasies than what he actually found on the island.

Scholars surmise that the large statue, of a type that never existed in Tahiti, is probably a blend of an Easter Island tiki and small Marquesan carvings. The title, which means “In Olden Times,” suggests that Gauguin was trying to reconstruct an earlier, unspoiled Tahiti instead of the colonized squalor that he actually discovered.

Jointly Owned Painting

“Mata Mua,” said to be the most important of the artist’s Tahitian works in private hands, was jointly owned by Ortiz-Patino and Baron Heinz-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a Swiss industrialist whose private collection is second only to that of the British royal family.

Ortiz-Patino was sole owner of the seven other paintings. Among them, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Jeune Fille au Chapeau Garni de Fleurs des Champs” brought $13.75 million and Paul Cezanne’s early Cubist still life, “Pichet et Fruits sur une Table,” fetched $11.55 million, a record for the artist.

Other works owned by Ortiz-Patino that commanded prices in the millions were:

--Renoir’s “Couple Lisant,” painted in 1877, sold for $3.08 million;

--An early Claude Monet, “Garden House on the Banks of the Zaan,” painted in 1871, sold for $11 million;

--”Asters et Fruits sur une Table,” a still life by Henri Fantin-Latour, brought $1.87 million;

--”Fete de Septembre, Pontoise,” a city scene by Camille Pissarro, dated 1872, sold for $1.98 million.

“Laveuses au Bord de la Touques,” a beach scene by Eugene Boudin and owned by Ortiz-Patino, bettered its pre-sale estimate of between $200,000 and $300,000, selling for $407,000.

Ortiz-Patino, a 59-year-old Bolivian who lives in a treasure-filled house in Geneva, is a grandson of the legendary tin king, Simon I. Patino. An avid collector of silver, decorative arts, book, stamps and paintings, Ortiz-Patino began his Impressionist collection in 1980 with his inheritance of the Renoir painting from his mother, Graziella Patino, and he subsequently added a picture each year.

He might appear to be an unlikely seller but, in the days of multimillion-dollar paintings, even the wealthy can be priced out of the art market--or at least the priciest part of it. According to a Sotheby’s press release, Ortiz-Patino decided to sell his Impressionist paintings when it became too expensive and difficult to continue to build a top-quality collection.

As a collector who loves the chase, he decided to sell to finance his habit. Profits from the Impressionist works will allow him to buy less expensive Old Master paintings and to enhance his other collections.

Among works consigned to Sotheby’s by other collectors, two works by Claude Monet brought big prices: “Alice Hoschede au Jardin” went for $8.8 million and “Un Verger au Printemps” sold for $4.5 million. An abstract landscape by Wassily Kandinsky set a record of $3.96 million for the artist. Other records included sales of works by Odilon Redon, Oskar Kokoschka and Marie Laurencin.

Following the auction, Sotheby’s officials announced an October sale of the collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and modern paintings, furniture and other works of art assembled by John T. Dorrance Jr., the late chairman of Campbell Soup Co. Fixing the collection’s value in excess of $100 million, Marion called it “the most valuable collection of art ever to come to auction.”

Sales of Impressionist and modern art will continue today when Sotheby’s offers 162 paintings and sculptures, valued at $24 million to $32 million, and 143 drawings and watercolors, expected to bring between $10.2 million and $13.7 million.

Tonight at Christie’s, the $20-million collection of the late film producer Hal B. Wallis will go on the block along with landscapes owned by the Searle pharmaceutical family and works consigned by various other owners.

Dominate Art Market

Sotheby’s and Christie’s so dominate the art market that it is difficult for other auction houses to get a piece of the action except at the low end. The Geneva-based firm of Habsburg, Feldman attempted to break into the Impressionist and modern market on Monday night, but results were only marginally encouraging for the 2-year-old company.

Habsburg, Feldman’s $26-million sale set a record of $4.6 million for Marc Chagall, when his 1929 painting, “The Violinist With the World Upside-Down” sold to Fujii Gallery of Tokyo. Aoyama Gallery, also of Tokyo, bought nine paintings, but 19 of the generally lackluster group of 57 works offered failed to sell.