Chagall Work Nets Record $4.6 Million

Japanese bidders dominated the first of a weeklong series of auctions of Impressionist and modern art that saw Marc Chagall’s “Violinist With the World Upside Down” sold for $4.6 million, an auction record for the artist.

On Tuesday, a sale by Sotheby’s of paintings from the collection of Bolivian tin heir Jaime Ortiz-Patino was expected to generate excitement with the sale of Paul Gauguin’s “Mata Mua,” a Tahitian pastoral scene carrying a pre-sale evaluation of $25 million.

Tonight, the action will be at Christie’s, where art from the estate of the late Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis will go on sale. Three paintings in the Wallis sale are expected to bring at least $7 million each.

The record Chagall price Monday was paid by the Fuji Gallery of Tokyo, which purchased the example of Chagall’s “Fiddler on the Roof” paintings at a sale at the Regency Hotel by Habsburg, Feldman, a Swiss auction house that recently opened a New York branch. The previous auction record for a Chagall was $2.5 million.

The painting, dated 1929, was consigned for sale by the trustees of Bryn Mawr College of Pennsylvania, to which it was bequeathed last year by Mary Katharine Woodworth, a professor at the school.

Picasso’s ‘The Dream’

The highest price in the sale of 57 paintings Monday was $6.27 million, paid by an unidentified America collector for Pablo Picasso’s “The Dream,” a portrait of the artist’s 21-year-old mistress, Marie-Therese Walter, painted in 1932. Another Picasso, “Woman Threading a Needle,” from his 1920s classic period, brought $2.42 million.

Although bids on 19 paintings did not reach the floor price established by the consignors and gallery, thus not selling, the auction totaled $26.3 million, more than the $23-million pre-sale estimate by Habsburgs experts for all of the paintings.

“It was standing-room only--a good mix of Americans, Europeans and Japanese, but it was the Japanese who dominated,” said an auction house executive.

One Japanese bidder, Kiyotaka Kori of Tokyo, bought 10 paintings, including a Renoir, Cezanne and a Van Dongen, for a total of $6.4 million.

The sales will run through Saturday, dispersing paintings, drawings and sculpture valued at $460 million. They include the whole range of top artists of the last 100 years, from Degas, Cezanne and Renoir to Picasso, Miro and Dali.