Bumpy Recovery
Held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC), Sotheby’s 17 sales spanned fine art, antiques, wine, jewelry, and watches, and brought in USD 411 million—the seventh consecutive Hong Kong series total to exceed USD 400 million. The fine-art evening sales kicked off on July 8 with Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, which attained USD 5.38 million over 14 lots. The sale was led by category mainstay Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres’s fresh-to-the-market oil painting Balinese Women in The Garden (undated), which met estimates at USD 950,940.
The Modern Art Evening Sale moved 34 out of 35 lots to make (1952) hammered at USD 33.3 million; pre-sale estimates were undisclosed. The painting last sold at Christie’s Hong Kong in 2005 for USD 2 million. The surge in value was buoyed by recent headline sales in Hong Kong of the modern painter’s signature nudes, including the USD 38.7 million s (1950) sold at Christie’s in November 2019, and the USD 25.2 million (1965) offered at Sotheby’s one month prior.
