John Thain's Picasso Sells for $29.6 Million as Auctions Start

It’s part of the semiannual auctions that bring the art world to Manhattan. There’s more than $1.8 billion worth of art on offer. Here are the latest developments, updated throughout the evening:

Sale Totals $279.2 Million, Below Low Estimate (9:07 p.m.)

The auction at Christie’s Rockefeller Center salesroom is over. The total was $279.2 million, below the low estimate of $305 million.

Monet’s Snowy Giverny Scene Beats High Estimate (8:35 p.m.)

A Claude Monet water lily painting sold for $31.8 million, against an estimate of $30 million to $50 million while the artist’s wintery snow scene at Giverny found a buyer at almost $15.5 million. Its estimate was $5 million to $8 million.

Artist Auction Records Set for Arp, Lempicka (8:13 p.m.)

A curvy white sculpture by Hans Arp sold for $5.8 million, setting an auction record for the artist. A painting by Tamara de Lempicka, “La Musicienne,” sold for $9.1 million, also an auction record for the artist.

A Van Gogh painting of a garden, estimated at $40 million, went unsold.

Thain’s Picasso Sells for $29.6 Million (7:42 p.m.)

Pablo Picasso’s “La Lampe,” a 1931 painting depicting the artist’s young lover, Marie-Therese Walter, fetched $29.6 million. It was estimated at $25 million to $35 million. The anonymous seller of the work was Wall Street veteran John Thain, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. He’d owned it since 2008.

A smaller Picasso portrait of Marie-Therese Walter in an orange beret, estimated at $15 million to $20 million, went unsold, as did Monet’s L’Escalier à Vétheuil, with a high estimate of $18 million.

Picasso accounted for about a quarter of the lots in the tonight’s sale. The Spanish artist’s grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso, 55, was among the throng of dealers and collectors attending the sale. DM