Fall Auction Season Opens With a Whimper : * Art: In Christie’s opening auction of 60 works, 22 items went begging and 13 brought lower prices than estimated.

The art market put its best foot forward this week--and took a faltering step. Early results of a series of Impressionist and modern art auctions beginning on Tuesday night and ending today suggest that the road to recovery may be paved with impediments.

In Christie’s opening auction of 60 works, 22 items went begging and 13 brought lower prices than the Park Avenue auction house had estimated. The Tuesday night auction had been expected to command between $51 million and $80 million, but only $38.9 million worth of art was sold. An auction of Impressionist and modern watercolors and drawings on Wednesday brought an additional $3.46 million in sales.

Launching the round of auctions with a sale of 18 highly regarded works from the renowned Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine collection, Christie’s had positioned itself to start the season with a bang.

Top-quality works tend to be withheld from the market when prices are low, but the Tremaine collection was part of an estate that had to be liquidated this year. Given the Tremaines’ reputation as collectors who selected new art that would prove to be historically important, hopes were high for a successful sale. “If this doesn’t do well, nothing will” was the constant refrain heard from dealers, collectors and auction house personnel for several months before the sale.

At first, the auction seemed to be set for success. The first six lots were sold within or above their estimated price ranges. But Lot 7, Georges Braque’s still life, “La Rose Noire,” valued at $1.8 million to $2.5 million, commanded only $1.1 million and set off a buzz in the fashionable crowd.

After that, results were mixed. The top lot, Fernand Leger’s E “Le Petit Dejeuner,” said to be the artist’s most important work in private hands, fell short of its $8-million low estimate when it was sold to an unidentified European collector for $7.7 million. “Premier Disque,” a landmark abstraction by Robert Delaunay, fetched $5.17 million, well above its $3-million high estimate, but a Mondrian valued at $4 million to $6 million did not sell.

While an anonymous bidder snapped up Juan Gris’ somber Cubist painting, “Pears and Grapes on a Table,” at $3.3 million--safely within Christie’s estimated price range--Joan Miro’s witty painting of a cat’s head, valued at $1.5 million to $2.5 million, did not find a buyer.

The 16 Tremaine works that were sold yielded a total of $18.78 million, notably less than the auction house’s most conservative estimate of $21.1 million. If that was disappointing to those who had hoped to witness the return of the art market’s glory days, there was greater discouragement to come. In a subsequent auction of 42 Impressionist and modern artworks, 20 pieces did not find buyers and 11 works were sold for less than their low estimates. Christie’s had predicted that the sale would bring between $30 million and $50 million, but it grossed a mere $20 million.

“What we are seeing is an art market that is still trying to find its proper level in the early ‘90s,” Maurice Tuchman, curator of 20th-Century art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, said as the crowd drifted away. “I don’t think the Tremaine sale was as definitive as many people expected it to be. Certainly, the power of quality shows in the prices. The issue of provenance (history of ownership) is important too, but the market is still soft.”

Christie’s auctioneer Christopher Burge characterized the top of the art market as “quite thin.” Only a few people can be expected to bid on multimllion-dollar works at any auction, even when the art market is booming, he said.

“My only major disappointment is the Toulouse-Lautrec,” Burge said, referring to “Femme Rousse Assise Dans le Jardin de M. Forest” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, valued at $4 million to $5 million. “It’s a tragedy that it didn’t sell. It’s a wonderful picture,” he said.

“That apart, many things did very well,” Burge said at a press conference. “We had an up-and-down result, but not a disastrous result.”

Attempting to put an optimistic spin on the Tuesday night auction, Burge noted that several clients had already approached him about buying the unsold Mondrian and Miro from the Tremaine collection.

Burge also cited the international composition of bidding as a sign of the market’s fundamental health. Although there were far fewer Japanese in the audience than two years when their purchases dominated Impressionist and modern art sales, Japanese dealers and collectors bought six of the 38 works that were sold on Tuesday night. North Americans purchased 16 pieces, Europeans bought 14 lots, and two went to South Americans.

Impressionist and modern art auctions were scheduled to continue on Wednesday night at Sotheby’s sale of 70 works valued at a total of $48 million to $65 million. An additional 144 lots, estimated at a total of $9 million to $13 million, will be offered today at Sotheby’s.