Chinese Art at Sothebys, March 2007

Chinese Art at Sothebys, March 2007 Sotheby’s sold $40 million in Chinese Art at its March 2007 auction, including works from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Museum]]>

March 2007, source: Sothebys’
This morning at Sotheby’s, there was applause after an extended bidding battle when an Important and Rare Archaic Bronze Wine Vessel and Cover (Fangjia), late Shang Dynasty, 13th -11th century B.C., from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, was purchased for a remarkable $8,104,000 by UK dealer Roger Keverne on behalf of Compton Verney, a museum outside Stratford-upon-Avon, England (lot 507, est. $2/3 million). The fangjia wine vessel, which set a new record for Chinese art at Sotheby’s New York, was the top lot of the two-day various-owners sale of Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art on March 19th-20th, which featured 480 lots of Chinese archaic bronzes, ceramics, stone sculpture, jades and rhinoceros horn carvings that totaled $35,298,700 (est. $26.3/37.4 million*). Additionally, Sotheby’s March 18th single-owner sale of The Concordia House Collection: Fine Chinese Jades and Important Works of Art from a Midwestern Family, brought $5,137,160, over one and a half times its high estimate, on Monday (est. $2/2.9 million), bringing the sales total for Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art to $40,435,860 (est. $28.1/40 million), shattering the previous record for Chinese art sales in New York.

Twenty-three works from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, sold to benefit the restricted endowment for the purchase of works of art, brought a total of $18,358,000.

Another highlight of the sale of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery pieces was an Important and Rare Massive Limestone Chimera, Six Dynasties, first half of the 6th century, which sold for $5,472,000, a record for a Chinese stone sculpture at auction, to an Asian private collector on the telephone, after a lengthy battle involving at least six bidders (lot 512, est. $1.5/2.5 million). This magnificent work is an extremely rare example of early secular stone statuary for mausoleums or ‘spirit roads’ in China. A pair of such beasts would have flanked the triumphal way leading to the tumulus (hill-tombs) of Emperors or Princes of the Liang Kingdom.