Sotheby's Hauls In $304 Million At Modern Art Auction, As Market Momentum Continues

A painted bottle by René Magritte (1898–1967) became one of the evening's most closely watched results in New York, where Sotheby's modern art auction closed at $303.9 million. The total was up 63 percent from a comparable sale a year earlier and fell squarely within the house's $242 million to $320.2 million estimate.

The sale's strongest result came from Henri Matisse's La Chaise Lorraine, a circa 1919 painting of a wooden chair holding a plate with three peaches. It sold for $48.4 million, well above its $25 million estimate, after remaining in the Barbier-Mueller Collection for decades. Pablo Picasso's Arlequin (Buste), from the collection of Adele and Enrico Donati, brought $42.6 million, while Vincent van Gogh's La Moisson en Provence, an 1888 drawing consigned anonymously by California collector Greg Renker, sold for $29.4 million.

The evening also produced an unusual benchmark: Magritte's Femme-bouteille, a 1955 work painted across the surface of a bottle and once owned by Sybil Shainwald, a health lawyer who died last year, sold for $974,000. Sotheby's said the result set an auction record for a painted bottle. The work stood apart from the more traditional canvases and drawings that anchored the sale, including material by Matisse, Picasso, and van Gogh.

The auction's mechanics were as notable as its headline prices. With most lots backed by irrevocable bids and two withdrawn, only one work failed to sell, producing a 97.6 percent sell-through rate. Sotheby's said Asian collectors helped drive bidding across works by 10 artists, including Rothko, Klee, O'Keeffe, Chagall, Tanguy, Schiele, and Picasso.

Julian Dawes, Sotheby's head of Impressionist and modern art, said the market responds when collectors are engaged and energized. He also pointed to a new tier of buyers in their 50s and 60s, comfortable spending $5 million to $20 million and drawn to Surrealism as well as established modernists. In a week crowded with major sales at Christie's and Phillips, Sotheby's result suggested that modern art remains a durable center of gravity when quality, rarity, and fresh supply align.

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