Auction May Signal Rebound in Art Market

New York auction watchers heaved a soft sigh of relief at the closing of Sotheby’s Wednesday night sale of Impressionist and modern art. Following a reassuring precedent set earlier in the week at Christie’s, the auction indicated that the market is probably on the rebound after 18 months of depression.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s charming portrait of his 7-year-old son, Jean Renoir, who became a renowned film director, commanded the auction’s top price of $2.3 million. The 1901 painting, which was purchased by an unidentified American private collector, had been valued at $2.25 million to $2.75 million.

Sotheby’s rang up $33.8 million in sales--considerably less than the predicted total of $39.7 million to $54.5 million but a notable increase from comparable auctions since the market crashed. Sotheby’s big Impressionist and modern art sale last spring brought a paltry $18 million and last fall’s comparable auction delivered a total of $27 million. Of the 93 works offered on Wednesday night, 14 failed to sell.

Christie’s has experienced a similar growth: from $23 million a year ago, to $38.8 million last fall, to a total of $51.5 million this week for sales of the William A. McCarty-Cooper collection and Impressionist and modern art. While record-setting works and multimillion-dollar prices are scarce, the auction houses seem to have come to grips with the new price level that the market will bear.

“Tonight’s sale was the strongest sale since the fall of 1990 and we were extremely pleased with the result,” said David Nash, director of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern paintings department. “We saw brisk activity throughout much of the evening with the majority of the bidding coming from North American private collectors. There was also bidding from Asian countries as well as from Central and South America and Europe.”

Nash attributed Sotheby’s success to artworks from private collections that hadn’t been on the market for many years. The Wednesday sale included 24 works from the estate of New York collectors Minna and Benjamin Reeves and 21 paintings, drawings and sculptures from the collection of the late Sidney E. Cohn, an attorney who was active in the labor movement and represented entertainment industry figures during the McCarthy hearings.

“Nu Debout Devant la Cheminee,” a 1936 painting by Henri Matisse, was purchased by an Asian dealer for $2.2 million--the second highest price in the auction. The third highest price of $1.6 million--and the top sum for a work from the Reeves collection--was paid for “Le Parc aux Charrettes, Pontoise,” an Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro.

The Cohn collection brought a total of $4.9 million in sales--equal to Sotheby’s low estimate. Two early drawings by Pablo Picasso commanded top dollar. A 1904-5 sketchbook-like sheet, “Etude Pour l’Acteur and Deux Profils de Fernande,” valued at $250,000 to $350,000, was sold for $825,000. A 1907 gouache and watercolor work, “Study of Head for Nude With Drapery,” estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, was purchased for $687,500.