Natalia Goncharova triumphs at Sotheby`s
Sotheby`s auction house held its latest Russian sales in New York Tuesday, raising $17.6 million, while the average price for each item was estimated at around $1 million.
This issue of Sotheby`s Russian sales has become a remarkable event for the art market, as it featured artworks worthy of any respectable museum`s collection. The top lots have been put up for sale by America`s top museums and galleries.The 25 lots, of which only 13 were sold, included Vasily Vereshchagin, Nikolay Feshin, Natalya Goncharova and others.
Natalia Goncharova`s work Street in Moscow became this auction`s sensation as its final price exceeded the favorite of the sales - Vereshchagon`s Pearl Mosque at Delhi, and sold for a record-breaking $6.3 million, having been valued at between $1.2 and $1.5 million. Paintings by this avant-garde Russian artist have always caused massive interest among art buyers. The record for her painting was set in 2008 when her still life Flowers raised astounding $10.9 million.
Nikolay Fechin`s masterpiece Bearing Away the Bride, created in 1908, from the collection of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, earned $ 3.3 million, while valued at between $3 and 5 million.
Vereshchagin`s large-scale oil on canvas, the top lot of the sales has sold for $3.1 million. It took the artist quite a while to finish this monumental work, begun in India in 1876 and completed in Paris four years later. This painting belongs to the artist`s Indian series and was purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, over a century ago.
Now that the epic work by Russia`s leading battle painters is back on the market, international collectors were expected to stand their own battle to get it. Several other Vereshchagin`s paintings have recently proved great interest in collectors at Sotheby`s having raised a total of $5.7 million.
Next in line are Mikhail Larionov`s Still Life in a Tavern in a Minor, which managed to double the estimates and sold for $ 1.5 million and Nikolay Roerich`s And We Continue Fishing, which earned the seller $1.4 million.
The total sum raised from the latest Important Russian Art sales that passed in New York on Tuesday made $ 17.6 million, while the organizers expected to earn at least $25-$29 million.
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