June Auctions: 10 hot lots

A dazzling array of artwork is coming to the auction block this June. Sellers are seemingly confident that the upper level of the market is steady and ready for top tier works of art to be sold.

"The best of the best" in all categories is in high demand. So far, 2010 has seen the world record price for art blown away twice: First, by Giacometti's Walking Man ($104.3 million) and then by a Picasso portrait of his blonde mistress ($106.5 million).

The June auctions in London may yield more record-busters for blue-chip artists such as Monet and Picasso while hopes remain for the mid-market level to show more signs of recovery, too.

Recent auction highlights (prices include buyer's premiums):

1.  A Chinese collector picked up a magnificent Chinese Imperial clock for $3.8 million from the Patricia Kluge sale held by Sotheby's in Virginia last week.

2.  A $17,479,940 total against an estimate of $3.2-$4.8 million at Sotheby's June 10 antiquities auction saw 90% of lots sold at or above estimates. A telephone bidder secured the top lot: A marble torso of an emperor from the first half of the first century A.D. which sold for $7,362,500, six times its estimate of $1.2 million. Christie's June 10 Antiquities sale netted $8.69 million with 64% lots sold. Three lots were questioned by some critics as being illegally excavated from Italy.

3.  Beijing-based Poly International Auction sold an 11th-century calligraphy scroll by Huang Tingjian for a whopping 438 million yuan ($57.4m), a record price for a Chinese work of art — more than doubling the previous high price set at auction last year for Chinese art. 

4.  Indian-born French artist Syed Haider Raza secured a world record for any modern Indian work of art when "Saurashtra," painted in 1983, was auctioned for £2,393,250 ($3,486,965) by Christie's.

Ones to watch:

5. Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation's Blue Period Picasso titled "Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto, or The Absinthe Drinker" is expected to exceed its conservative estimate of £30-£40m, at Christie's June 23 sale.

6. An American private collector is offering Andy Warhol's Silver Liz, a 1963 portrait of screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, estimated at £6-£8m, at Christie's June 30 sale. The bar is set to the peak of the market for this work. In 2007, actor Hugh Grant sold another painting from the Liz series for £11.4million at auction, just six years after he paid £2million for it. Grant was lauded for his market timing, but the star later revealed that the Warhol was an impulse buy while he was on a drinking binge. Recent prices for the Pop artist have been hefty. Designer Tom Ford sold a nine-foot-square Warhol self-portrait for $32.6 million at Sotheby's in May.

7. Monet's Nymphéas (Waterlilies) has an estimate of £30-£40m at Christie's June 23 sale. The growing popularity of the Impressionist's late Giverny works is reflected in the recent Monet Waterlilies show at NYC's Gagosian Gallery.

8. Even while June is considered low season for American paintings, California auctioneer John Moran is offering up several fine examples of American Impressionism (and earlier works) on June 15. Of note is an ethereal Emil Carlsen ($40,000-$60,000), but more under the radar is an intruiging early California history painting by W.F. Chadwick depicting a Winslow Homeresque genre scene of Placerville miners sluicing for gold. This circa-1854 painting is rare and estimated at just $3,000-$4,000.

9. Perhaps the largest and best collection of Ansel Adams photographs is coming to market. Sotheby's June 21-22 Photography auction includes 1,000 Polaroid and gelatin silver prints (400 of them by Adams including his most-admired Yosemite works) in a bankruptcy court-approved sale for PBE Corp., a former owner of Polaroid.

10. Manet's self-portrait, one of only two known, is perhaps the best Impressionist portrait to appear on the market in recent times. It bears a £20-£30m estimate at Sotheby's June 22 sale.