NEW YORK—Christie’s sale of 19th-century European art in London on Jan. 21 realized £2.3million ($3.2million) for 65 lots offered. Of these, 33 lots, or 51 percent, found buyers. By value the auction was 56 percent sold.
The top price was £337,250 ($467,766), paid by a European collector for Lancelot-Théodore Turpin de Crissé’s painting The Erechteion on the Acropolis, Athens, 1805, well above the estimate of £120,000/180,000. The work had been in the same collection for more than 27 years.
Alexej Harlamoff’s portrait of a young girl holding flowers, Summertime, had also been off the auction market for some time, having last been offered at Christie’s London in 1983. Estimated at £250,000/350,000 in this sale, it sold to a U.S. collector for £289,250 ($401,200).
A stable painting by Théodore-Jean-Louis Géricault (1791–1824), White Horse Standing in a Stable, circa 1810–13, was sold to a U.S. collector for £205,250 ($284,682), just clearing the low end of the £200,000/300,000 estimate with the buyer’s premium included. The painting has appeared at auction numerous times throughout its nearly 200-year history, including sales at the Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in 1867, 1883 and 1891, and more recently at Sotheby’s in London in June 1996.
