Auction a Success Despite Notable Glitch : Art: Christie’s tallies $30 million in modern, Impressionist art sale, but a Renoir didn’t sell.

Christie’s New York failed to find a buyer for Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting “La Loge,” the star item in a Tuesday night auction of Impressionist and modern art.

But instead of casting a pall over the entire evening, the rejection of the high-priced Renoir turned out to be little more than a notable glitch in a surprisingly successful sale.

As expected, there were no record prices, but Christie’s toted up $30 million in sales--just above its low estimate of $29 million. Of the 51 artworks that were offered, nine failed to sell.

“The buying range was quite broad, overall a nicely widespread group with Europeans, Americans and Asians participating,” said auctioneer Christopher Burge. “The combination of realistic reserves and sensible estimates encouraged active bidding.”

Christie’s had declined to publish an estimate for the Renoir, which sold for $12.1 million in 1989, near the peak of the market. But when bidding stopped at $5.2 million on Tuesday night, the picture--depicting a couple in a theater box--was withdrawn.

An unidentified New York dealer paid the auction’s top price of $2.9 million for Marc Chagall’s painting “Bouquet of Flowers.” An anonymous European collector purchased Piet Mondrian’s abstract “Composition With Red, Gray, Blue and Yellow” for $2.6 million.

Another Renoir, “Yvonne et Jean,” brought the third highest price of $2.2 million, while “Les Travailleurs de la Mer” by Edouard Manet was sold for $1.9 million.

Most works at the high end of the auction were sold within their estimated price ranges, but bidding for British artist Ben Nicholson’s painting “November, 1956” (from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago) soared past its $700,000-$900,000 estimate and finally stopped at $1.5 million.