Monet's 'Bridge' wins, 'Roses' lose at $240 million auction

Claude Monet's painting of Waterloo Bridge doubled its top estimate while a view of his rose garden in France fell short of its low valuation at a Christie's International sale last night in London.

The world's largest auction house took in 121.1 million pounds ($240 million), including commissions, beating its top target. Monet's 1904 "Waterloo Bridge, Temps Couvert" sold for 17.9 million pounds, with fees, to a U.S. collector bidding on the telephone.

Christie's kicked off a week of auctions where sellers attracted by rising prices may offer as much as 435 million pounds of Impressionist to contemporary art, about 50 percent more than last year. New buyers' changing taste sent some pictures soaring last night and left others in the lurch.

"The auction seesawed between the crazy and the unloved," London dealer James Roundell said as he left the saleroom. "I didn't have the urge to buy anything."

Eighteen percent of the 72 lots didn't sell, including semi- nudes by Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Fifty-four percent of the pictures topped their estimates, said Christie's European president, Jussi Pylkkanen, at a post-sale press conference.

Records were set for Joan Miro, whose 1940 red and yellow "Le Coq" took 6.6 million pounds from a telephone bidder, and Natalia Goncharova's "Picking Apples" from the early 1900s, which sold to an unidentified European collector for 4.9 million pounds, trebling its top estimate. The sellers' family bought it in 1962 from the artist, according to Christie's catalog.

Buyers were 78 percent Europeans, including Russians, Pylkkanen said. U.S. purchasers took 21 percent of the lots.

"We have new collectors for Impressionist art," Pylkkanen said before the sale.

A Maurice de Vlaminck landscape topped its estimate on a winning bid by the same purchaser who paid 5.7 million pounds for Peter Doig's "White Canoe" in February. With a Russian or East European accent, he has always declined to give his name.

New York dealer William Acquavella bought Miro's "Le Vent" at a discount to the top estimate.

Rene Magritte's 1959 "Le Sabbat," with an upside-down easel in a landscape, took 4.5 million pounds from a European bidding on the phone. It was once owned by Monaco-based dealer and collector David Nahmad, who said he sold it in 1975 for $100,000.

Nahmad's verdict on the sale: "There were not a lot of great pictures."