Chinese buyers spend $116m at art auction in NY

Three deep-pocketed Chinese buyers spent a total of $116.67 million at an auction of Western art on May 5 in New York.

They acquired three of the top five lots that were auctioned off at Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionism and Modern Art.

The regularly held sale is where the auction house earns most revenue and records are broken. The latest sale grossed more than $368 million. Nearly one third of it was contributed by Chinese mainland buyers.


1. Vincent van Gogh's L'allee des Alyscamps (the alley of Alyscamps) was sold for $66.33, taking the top spot. A Chinese mainland buyer won a hotly contested bidding race with another four competitors, including "an important American museum", said Sotheby’s, which refused to reveal the identity of the buyer.

2.Pablo Picasso's Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil (woman with a hairbun on a sofa) fetched $29.93 million to become the third-highest paid lot of the night. It went to Chinese media mogul Wang Zhongjun, who acquired a Van Gogh painting for $61.8 million also at Sotheby’s New York sale in November.

3.Claude Monet’s Bassin aux nympheas, les rosiers (pond with water lilies and roses) was another star of the evening sale with a $20.41 million price tag. Sotheby’s later disclosed the buyer was Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese commercial property developer and cinema chain operator founded by Wang Jianlin. It paid $28.1 million at Christie’s for a Picasso portrait.

Source: China Daily by Lin Qi