3 works from Elizabeth Taylor Collection fetch $21,8mln at Christie’s

PanARMENIAN.Net - The three top works of Impressionist and Modern art from the storied Collection of Elizabeth Taylor fetched a combined £13,787,750 ($21,784,645 /€16,572,876) at Christie’s London Tuesday, Feb 7 evening, more than doubling their pre-sale low estimate of £6.2 million, Art Daily reported.

An additional 35 works from the film star’s fine art collection will be offered for sale February 8 as part of Christie’s continuing sales series devoted to Impressionist and Modern Art. Further results for the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale will be announced at the close of the sale.

At Tuesday’s sale, Miss Taylor’s Van Gogh, entitled Vue de l’asile et de la Chappelle de Saint-Rémy, fetched the top price of the group at £10,121,250 ($15,991,575 /€12,165,743). The luminous landscape, painted in the turquoise and ochre hues of early autumn, is a view of the asylum where the artist spent his last months. Elizabeth Taylor’s father, the art dealer Francis Taylor, had purchased the painting on her behalf at auction in 1963 for £92,000. Up until her death in March of 2011, the painting had hung in the living room of Miss Taylor’s home in Bel Air, CA.

In the saleroom on Tuesday evening, bidding for the Van Gogh opened at £3 million and was immediately pursued by multiple clients in the room and on phone. It was sold after four minutes of competitive bidding to an anonymous client on the phone.

Earlier in the sale, a youthful self-portrait by Edgar Degas (1834-1917) sold for £713,250 ($1,126,935 / € 857,327) and a large-scale landscape by Claude Pissarro (1830-1903) entitled Pommiers à Éragny realized £2,953,250 ($4,666,135 /€ 3,549,807). All three works were prominently featured in the global tour of highlights from the Collection of Elizabeth Taylor, which reached New York and London last fall. In December 2011, Christie’s New York sold Miss Taylor’s exquisite collections of jewelry, fashion, decorative arts and memorabilia in a four-day marathon auction series that totaled $156.8 million and set multiple new auction records.