Manet, Monet fetch much money at Sotheby's

LONDON (AFP): Paintings by French Impressionists Monet and Manet fetched well over four million pounds (US$6 million) each at auction last Tuesday at Sotheby's.

Claude Monet's Poplars on the Banks of L'Epte drew 4.8 million pounds ($7.5 million), and a first study for Edouard Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere, which depicts a sad-looking barmaid in a low-cut dress in front of a mirror, was sold for 4.4 million pounds ($6.8 million).

Both were sold to anonymous buyers.

Also Tuesday, the Picasso print La Minotauromachie sold for 507,500 pounds ($784,000) to an anonymous German dealer. It was a world auction record for a Picasso print.

In it, the Spanish artist depicts himself as the minotaur, half beast, half man.

Although no records were broken by the Monet and Manet paintings, a Sotheby's spokesman exclaimed, "These are astonishingly strong prices."

The Manet had been estimated at three million pounds ($4.5 million), the Monet at two to three million.

The record for a Monet was 14.3 million pounds ($21.4 million) for Dans La Prairie at Sotheby's in London in June 1988. For a Manet, the record was attained when La Promenade sold for 9.4 million pounds ($14 million) at Sotheby's in New York in November 1989.

Astronomical prices realized by Impressionist works at that time were hailed as a sign of the boom when Japanese buyers in particular bought heavily at high prices.

But when the bottom fell out of the Tokyo property boom, the prices of Impressionist paintings brought to auction declined. Tuesday's sale was part of a series of summer art auctions of Impressionist and modern paintings.

On Monday sales got off to a sluggish start at Christie's auction house. Only a little over half the lots of Impressionist and modern paintings and sculptures sold, fetching a total of some 9.3 million pounds ($14 million) They included works by Picasso, Degas and Monet.