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Concerns about a down auction market did not stop several notable sales from taking place during this year’s autumn edition of Asia Week New York.
The results highlighted growing interest in South Asian modern and contemporary art, Chinese antiques, and a ubiquitous iconic Japanese woodblock print.
All sale prices listed below include the buyer’s premium and other fees.
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A Wave of Interest
Both Christie’s and Bonhams sold prints this week of Katsushika Hokusai‘s Kanagawa-oki nami-ura (Under the Wave off Kanagawa), often referred to as The Great Wave. On September 17, Christie’s sold its print of the iconic Japanese woodblock image for $858,800 on an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. The next day, Bonhams sold its own Great Wave for $889,500. This was higher than Christie’s, but just below the top range of the Bonhams estimate of $700,000 to $900,000.
It’s worth noting that the two results were not among the five highest for prints of The Great Wave, and Sebastian Izzard, a dealer of Japanese art, previously told ARTnews they were not among the best examples he had seen in his career. The auction record for a Great Wave print was set this past March when one of them sold at Christie’s New York for $2.8 million to an anonymous telephone bidder on an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000.
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Interest in Hokusai extended to one of his original ink paintings, Swimming Carp, which saw a lot of competition, with Christie’s selling it for $655,200 on an estimate of $250,000 to $300,000.
On September 18, Bonhams also sold a complete edition of Hokusai’s ōban tate-e prints entitled Shokoku taki meguri (A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces) for $508,500 on an estimate of $450,000 to $550,000.
Continued growth, with one exception
On September 18, Christie’s held its live auction of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art, which totaled nearly $9.4 million with a sell-through rate of 98 percent.
The top lot in the South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale was a colorful abstract painting by Jehangir Sabavala; The Radiant Spheres (1963) sold for $730,800 on an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. It was followed by Francis Newton Souza‘s Still Life with Relics (1984), which took in $478,800 on an estimate of $180,000 to $250,000; and Akbar Padamsee’s Jeune femme aux cheveux noirs, la tête inclinée, which drew $403,200 on an estimate of $350,000 to $500,000.
Notably, Souza’s Resurrected Christ (1962), carrying an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000, did not sell after the auction house set a new $4.9 million record for the artist this past March, and organized a non-selling exhibition for the centenary of his birth.
Other smaller works by Souza sold for well above their high estimates, including a felt-tip pen-and-ink drawing on paper, Untitled (Church), that brought in $163,800 (est. $20,000–$30,000); the acrylic painting Untitled (Self-Portrait), also for $163,800 (est. $25,000–$35,000); and the gouache painting Untitled (Figures) for $138,600 (est. $35,000–$50,000).
Francis Newton Souza’s Resurrected Christ (1962) was a featured lot.
Courtesy Christie’s
Art dealer Arushi Kapoor told ARTnews the result for Resurrected Christ was likely due to the lack of education in the international art world for South Asian art. “The collectors are mostly still South East Asian origin,” she said. “They already have A+ works available to them locally or within the subcontinent. The marketing and education for non-Southeast origin collectors is so limited that even most museums don’t have a Souza in the collection.”
Auction records were also set during the Christie’s sale for Indian painter Bikash Bhattacharjee, Sri Lankan artist Ivan Peries, Bangladeshi artist Mohammad Kibria, and Indian artist Ram Kumar.
A Vessel of Great Intrigue
The Sotheby’s Chinese art sale, which also took place September 18, totaled $15.3 million. The sale’s standout was the Zhou Zha Hu, a 3,000-year-old bronze ritual wine vessel that was once in the collection of the 18th-century Qianlong Emperor, and was documented in an imperial catalog of ancient bronzes. It captured $5.4 million (on an estimate of $3 million to $5 million). One of a pair of vessels dating to the Middle Western Zhou dynasty, it was commissioned by Zhou Zha in honor of his father; its mate is at the National Palace Museum of Taipei, in Taiwan.
The Zhou Zha Hu vessel was included in an imperial catalog of bronzes.
Courtesy Sotheby’s
Angela McAteer, Sotheby’s head of Chinese ceramics and art, told ARTnews she was encouraged by the results, including the “very healthy” sell-through rate of 72.5 percent and Zhou Zha Hu setting the second-highest price for a Chinese work of art this year. “It was the highest price set outside of Asia, and the most expensive Chinese work sold in the US this year,” McAteer said, noting that a bidder on the phone and someone in the room chased it, but it sold to the latter.
“The fact that it was in the Qianlong Emperor’s collection, who, in the 18th century, was the most powerful man in the world … and one of the greatest art collectors ever known in our history, was sort of a remarkable additional angle. [You] very rarely see archaic bronzes like this.”
A Sotheby’s spokesperson confirmed to ARTnews that the Zhou Zha Hu was purchased for the Hong Kong–based Huaihaitang Collection and “will be exhibited at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2025 to mark the 65th anniversary of the Min Chiu Society.” The collection was started in the early 1980s by real estate businessman and Chinese imperial art collector Anthony KW Cheung.
While McAteer acknowledged a few categories that observed “a real downturn in prices,” there was still competitive bidding, and nearly 90 percent of the porcelain works sold, a major area of her department’s focus.
Other items that exceeded their estimates during the Sotheby’s sale of Chinese art included an “extremely large and rare” famille-rose porcelain figure of Puxian seated on an elephant, from the Qing dynasty, that sold for $1.2 million (on an estimate of $500,000 to $700,000); a Qianlong period imperial gold filigree twin box and cover with inlaid turquoise stones from the Qing dynasty (sold for $216,000 on an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000); and an archaic bronze ritual food vessel from the Late Shang dynasty that sold for $132,000 on an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000.
The elaborately decorated figure of Puxian took in more than $1.2 million.
Courtesy Sotheby’s
McAteer said one of the reasons some of these items sold so well was the feeling of “discovery.”
“The markets didn’t know about these pieces, or they’ve been off the market for so many decades that the current generation of collectors has never seen this piece or is not aware of it,” she told ARTnews. “We’ve seen, historically, that buyers respond extremely well to this fresh material, particularly material that has sort of been hidden from view in the West for so long, which, again, was the case with so many of these pieces.”
This also helped drive interest in the 27-inch-tall porcelain Buddhist sculpture of Puxian.
“Nobody even knew that this existed outside of the Imperial collection in Beijing,” McAteer said. “So it was great material. And as we’ve seen, historically, great material can sometimes buck the wider economic trends.”
