Moore, Miro sell for record sums in London

The Moore sculpture, an abstract bronze cast of a reclining woman called “Reclining Figure: Festival,” sold for 19 million pounds (US$30 million, 23 million euros) — more than three times the 5.5-million-pound estimate.

Christie's said the work, which was commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951, was “one of the most outstanding examples of the reclining figure in the whole of (Moore's) prodigious oeuvre.”

The highest price previously set for a Moore work was just 4.3 million pounds, for a 1957 bronze cast called “Draped Reclining Woman,” sold in London four years ago, a Christie's spokeswoman said.

The record-breaking Miro sale, a 1925 canvas named “Painting Poem (le corps de ma brune)” went under the hammer for 16.8 million pounds — again soaring over the pre-sale estimate of up to 9 million pounds.

“'Le corps de ma brune' is the finest work from a groundbreaking series of paintings,” said Olivier Camu, deputy chairman in the Impressionist Art Department at Christie's.

“Widely considered the most important of all of Miro's work, the “Poem Paintings” instigated a whole new way of working that Miro would follow for the rest of his life and was to significantly influence Pablo Picasso.”

The painting, described by Christie's as “part lyrical free-form painting and part hand-written stream-of-conscious poetry,” was sold from a private New York art collection.

The previous record auction price for a work by Miro, who died in 1983, was for “La caresse des etoiles,” which sold in New York in 2008 for US$17 million.

The London auction house also saw three paintings owned by the late Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor, including one by Vincent Van Gogh, sell for a total of 13.9 million pounds (US$22 million, 17 million euros).

Van Gogh's “Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy” (“View of the Asylum and Chapel of Saint-Remy”), which had been bought for Taylor by her art dealer father in 1963, went for 10.1 million pounds.

A self-portrait of French Impressionist Edgar Degas and a landscape by Claude Pissarro, also owned by the star, sold for 713,250 pounds and 2,953,250 pounds respectively.

“The exceptional results for these three masterpieces by Van Gogh, Degas and Pissarro are further evidence of Elizabeth Taylor's skill and sophistication as a collector,” said Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas.

The British-American star had amassed an extraordinary collection of jewelry and couture as well as art by the time she died last March aged 79.

A weeklong auction of her belongings in New York in December drew total sales of US$156.8 million (99 million pounds, 118 million euros). The last of Tayor's art collection goes on sale at Christie's in London on Wednesday and Thursday.

A work by the Spanish Cubist painter Juan Gris, “Le livre” (“The Book”), also sold on Tuesday for 10.3 million pounds.

Described by the auction house as “a key transitional work,” it had been expected to sell for up to 18 million pounds.

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