FIRST OFF . . .

A collection of 44 paintings belonging to the estate of the son of the founder of Campbell’s Soup has sold for a record $116 million at Sotheby’s auction house in New York. Erratic bidding Wednesday night saw record highs and unexpected lows, but ended with the largest total ever paid for a private collection. The works, including Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and modern paintings by Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir and Degas among others, belonged to John T. Dorrance, whose father founded Campbell’s. Dorrance died in April. An unexpected record for Henri Matisse’s “Woman With Red Umbrella” came when it sold to an anonymous bidder via telephone for $12.3 million. However, Van Gogh’s “Man at Sea,” which portrays a woman clutching her child awaiting her husband’s return from the sea, sold for $7.15 million--less than the $8 million to $12 million presale estimate--to Kiyotaka Kori, a Tokyo dealer representing Aska International, a Japanese concern. The record for a single collection sale had been $85 million, set last November at Christie’s auction house for the William Goetz collection. Sotheby’s had a low estimate of $93.5 million and a high figure of $129 million for the Dorrance collection. Sotheby’s reported that 15 of the 44 lots went to Japanese bidders.