Under the hammer and the sharp eye of Sotheby’s inimitable auction-man Oliver Barker, the first 31-lot load of the well-touted Emily Fisher Landau collection did a fair job buttressing the New York grand dame’s famously forward-thinking art-world reputation on the evening of November 8 on York Avenue. Of Fisher Landau’s truly stellar lots, the star of the event, Lot 10, Picasso’s 1932 portrait of mistress and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, ‘Femme a la Montre’ pulled in a respectable $121 million, just a million more than Sotheby’s own exacting estimate. Including the Sotheby’s buyer’s and overhead premiums, the final sale price was $139 million and change.
It was the most expensive art work sold to date in 2023 and represents the second-highest price for a Picasso. In general, good for Picasso, and good for the esteemed Ms. Fisher Landau, both of those formidable 20th-centurians stood up to the task of meeting the 21st century with their goods.
But because the world is such a shaky place, and seemingly shakier now that we have two running ground wars in Eastern Europe and in the ever-combustible Middle East, it remains for us to determine what that increment of $19 million over the Sotheby’s estimate represents about the health or the ailments of of the market for the classic modern right this minute.
The fact that the buyer’s and overhead premiums were responsible for close to 95% of the difference between the sale price and the house estimate is interesting. The action on the auction floor toward a hammer price faltered rather than took flight as the hammer price approached the house estimate. In the event, there was a brief moment of quiet as the hammer price slowly ratcheted up toward the $120 million “ceiling.” Sotheby’s ultra-crisp Oliver Barker sensed that and slowed his ordinarily bright marketing slightly, to let the money being tossed in the air settle in the minds of its (at that moment) three main bidders. And the question is, why that, for this spectacular canvas from this globally-recognized tip-of-the-art-world owner?
As the second-highest price paid to date for a Picasso, it certainly cannot be called a steal, but as a market price and indicator, it was more than fair to the buyer. What the buyer won at that final hammer price, the painting seems a bargain — by virtue of place in the oeuvre, sitter, sterling provenance, and not least, the highly detailed, personal Picasso-family narrative bolted to that specific canvas. Here’s hoping this very personal masterpiece is allowed to remain in the public realm.