Paul Cezanne’s “Les Pommes” sold for $41.6 million at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale which totaled $230 million, just shy of its $235 million high estimate. The top lot, Cezanne’s “Les Pommes”, a still life by Cézanne from 1889-90 was expected to bring $25 million to $35 million.
When auction began three bidders pushed up prices, before it sold to a telephone bidder for $37 million, or $41.6 million with fees. This painting is followed by Amedeo Modigliani’s famed portrait “L’Amazone,” which went for $25.9 million.
This two works are from the collection of philanthropists Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt and will fund a foundation set up in their honor, with a focus on animal welfare and their other favored causes.
Madonna’s “Trois Femmes a la Table Rouge,” a Cubist work painted by Fernand Leger in 1921, sold for $7.2 million, exceeding its estimate of $5-7 milliion.
The first of the big spring auctions began Tuesday night at Sotheby’s, and among crowd of visitors were seen the rapper L L Cool J and the New York businessman Donald L. Bryant Jr. All eyes were on the front row, as members of the Nahmad family — the dynasty of dealers with galleries in the Carlyle Hotel in New York and on Cork Street in London — sat in their usual places.
