Museum Quality Pays Dividends at Christie’s $270m Spring Sales

Museum quality often signals a work that’s both exceptional and investment-grade. That proved true last week when an edition of Henry Moore’s bronze King and Queen led Christie’s spring sales in London.

Cast in 1954 and acquired directly from the artist that same year, the sculpture sold for $35.13m with fees, setting a new auction record for Moore. The last cast in a private collection, two later casts of the striking work are in the Tate and at Moore’s former home and studio.

This top lot in its evening sale helped the auction house achieve B+ on the HENI Auction Index, an improvement on B- a year ago.

It was one of six sales in its marquee week on March 5-7, excluding its Art of the Surreal sale held the same week.

Christie's good result was partly driven by a sharp rise in total sales, which climbed 38% from last October to $269.9m in real terms. The volume of works offered also increased, with 546 lots, around 49% more than the average for comparable sales.

A single-collection sale held over evening and day sessions also contributed to the the auction house's results. Belgian collectors Roger and Josette Vanthournout had excellent taste and filled their home with first-rate works.

The two sales of their art included a Picasso painting, Man Ray photograph and sculpture by Moore. The evening session was close to reaching its pre-sale high estimate while the day sale exceeded its high expectations. Together they totaled $65.35m with fees.

The HENI Auction Index is a benchmark derived from more than ten data points, including the percentage of lots that hammer above their low and high pre-sale estimates. Both measures improved in this sale: the share exceeding the low estimate returned to the typical level of 68%, while the share surpassing the high estimate rose to 43%—five percentage points above the 38% average seen in comparable past sales.

The average hammer to mid estimate ratio was also slightly above average in previous comparable sales: 1.4 versus 1.3.

Only 1% of lots had strong guarantees, however. The percentage of lots with weak guarantees, selling for on or near their low estimate, was in line with historical average.

The average number of bidders per lot was stable at 2.6.

The percentages of lots bought-in and withdrawn rose relative to Christie’s London spring sales a year ago, however.

The Vanthournouts’ Man Ray, La prière (The prayer) (1930), was among the outperformers in the week. The nude, for which Lee Miller posed, sold for $543,000 against a $68,200 low estimate.

Among the notable underperformers in the sales was Andy Warhol’s Four Mona Lisas (1978), which had a guarantee. It sold for $5.76m with fees, so above the low estimate but nearly $230,000 below its 2014 auction price, delivering a negative return of about 3%.

The screenprint is one of six versions Warhol made in 1978, three of which are in major museum collections.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here.