At 411 lots, the collection amassed by the Stuttgart-based Beck family was also the largest single-owner art collection to be put on view at Bond Street in recent years.
Faced with having to find buyers for such a large number of lots, the majority of which were medium-to-low value items appealing to German buyers, Sotheby’s decided to maximise German interest by selling the collection in euros.
A final premium-inclusive total of €22.9m (£14.4m) against an estimate of €20.6m-€27.8m appeared to vindicate this decision, particularly in view of the current atmosphere of economic uncertainty, not least in Germany itself.
Of the 411 lots on offer, 273 (66.4 per cent) successfully found buyers. The Becks, who made a fortune out of central heating engineering, owned few German Expressionist masterworks, but the October 8 Part I sale did yield new auction records of €4m (£2.5m) for August Macke’s rare 1913 canvas Zwei Frauen vor dem Hutladen and €2.4m (£1.5m) for Alexej von Jawlensky’s superb Fauve-influenced c.1912 canvas Halbakt (Nude Half-Figure).
The following day the Beck Collection’s enormous holdings of works on paper also had their moments, such as when the distinguished Viennese collector Rudolf Leopold almost tripled the record for proto-surrealist Alfred Kubin by paying €280,000 (£176,000) for the extraordinary c.1901-2 drawing Seegespenst (Sea Monster), while star of the Beck’s print collection was Max Beckmann’s rare portfolio of 1918-19 lithographs, Die Hölle (Hell), which sold to the London dealers Artemis Fine Art just above estimate for €355,000 (£224,000).
With Christie’s unable to gather together enough lots for a sale (theirs will take place in February) owing to the drawing-power of the Beck Collection, Sotheby’s October 9 evening sale was the only mixed-owner German and Austrian sale of the week. Conducted in sterling and comprising just 43 lots, this was, by previous years’ standards, a relatively low-key affair, achieving a premium-inclusive total of £6.4m against a pre-sale estimate of £7.4-£10.6m, with 16 (37 per cent) of the lots unsold.
Nonetheless, after a gruelling and at times nerve-wracking week spent finding buyers for an unprecedented 450 lots of German and Austrian art, Sotheby’s were more than satisfied with the result. Deputy Chairman Guy Jennings commented after the sale: “Times are tough and you have to work hard, but we have at least sold £20m worth of German paintings.”
Huge single-owner sale is London’s first in euros
Sotheby’s break mould in bid to lure Germans: A little piece of history was made on October 8 and 9 when Sotheby’s four-part dispersal of the Beck Collection of 20th Century German and Austrian art became the first major sale ever to be conducted in euros in a London auction room.
