Christie’s total was down 18 per cent on 2006 (boosted by the epic €60m Dray Art Deco sale), while ArtCurial’s sales of €52m (£35m) represented a rise of six per cent, thanks mainly to a 38 per cent climb in totals for contemporary art to €14.8m.
The overall volume take-up was 82 per cent at Christie’s and 70 per cent at ArtCurial.
A successful €8m foray to Monaco at the end of July enabled Tajan to stay third with sales of €41m (£27.5m), although Sotheby’s, after several years in the Paris doldrums, closed the gap with sales of €38.3m (£25.7m), an increase of nearly 20 per cent.
The largest rise was at Piasa, where sales soared 38 per cent to €24.6m (£16.5m), thanks to the consignor-friendly innovations of Jacques Babonneau, installed by François Pinault as head of the firm for his financial wizardry.
Piasa duly led the Drouot-based firms ahead of Millon & Associés on €19m (£12.8m), Aguttes on €15.6m (£10.5m), Cornette de St-Cyr on €12.1m (£8.1m), and Beaussant-Lefèvre on €11.6m (£7.8m).
Overall sales from Drouot’s 74 firms totalled €250m (£168m), with just five individual prices of over €1m – compared to ten at Christie’s alone.
Highest price at Drouot was the €1.9m for Etienne Dinet’s Orientalist Vue Aérienne de la Palmeraie. At Christie’s the top lot was the €6.9m for Francis Bacon’s Untitled (Figure on a Dais) – the highest price at auction in France this year.
Meanwhile Pierre Bergé & Associés recorded sales of €8.9m (£6m) in Paris and €13.1m (£8.8m) in Brussels, confirming their position as leaders of the Belgian auction market.
• All figures include buyer’s premium.
By Simon Hewitt
Christie’s €100m dominance of Paris auctions
Half-yearly Paris figures to August showed Christie’s consolidating their lead with sales of €100.3m (£67.3m), nearly twice as much as their nearest rivals, ArtCurial.
