SHORT TAKES : Liz Taylor’s Van Gogh--No Sale
A Van Gogh painting owned by film star Elizabeth Taylor failed to sell Monday when bidding stopped at $11.2 million, short of her minimum asking price, Christie’s auctioneers said.
“View of the Asylum and the Chapel at Saint Remy,” painted in 1889, had been expected to fetch up to $19 million in a sale seen as a barometer of the faltering art market.
“I’m afraid we have a disappointing result; we’ve failed to sell the picture,” a Christie’s spokesman said. The minimum price Taylor had asked for the artwork was not disclosed.
The fact that Taylor owned the painting, which depicts the asylum to which Van Gogh committed himself, had been expected to provide an extra boost to the price.
Taylor’s father bought the painting for her in 1963 for the modern-day equivalent of $178,000.
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