Written by John Sheridan Wednesday, 22 June 2011 23:07

Egon Schiele Masterpiece Establishes World Record Price at Sotheby's London

LONDON - Sotheby's sold a rare cityscape by Austrian artist Egon Schiele for a record 24.7 million pounds ($40.1 million) at a London auction on Wednesday, June 22nd.The auction house had expected to fetch between 22 and 30 million pounds for the work, called "Hauser mit bunter Wasche 'Vorstadt' II" ("Houses with colorful Laundry, 'Suburb' II"). The work was painted in 1914 at the height of Schiele's short career, four years before his death in the Spanish influenza epidemic at the age of 28.

Proceeds from the sale are expected to be used to help pay for the settlement of a long-running restitution dispute over a 1912 portrait of the artist's lover Walburga Neuzil (Wally). A Manhattan court upheld claims the work had been seized by the Nazis, prompting the Leopold Museum in Vienna to pay $19 million in 2010 in an out-of-court settlement to keep the painting.

The Leopold Museum will still have eight cityscapes by Schiele, said Helena Newman, who runs Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department in London. “But ‘Wally’ is a one of a pair of self-portraits,” she noted. That painting, which depicts the artist’s mistress Wally Neuzil, Ms. Newman explained, is a companion to a self-portrait by Schiele that is the same size and also part of the Leopold’s holdings. “Clearly they work as a pair and are hung together.”

Auction houses competed to win “Houses With Colorful Laundry (Suburb II).” Sotheby’s managed to wrest the property from Christie’s by offering the museum a guarantee — an undisclosed sum promised to the seller regardless of the sale’s outcome — that is being financed by an outside party. Although guarantees are always secret, experts with knowledge of the negotiations said this one is around $40 million.

Only three notable Schiele cityscapes have been offered for auction in the last decade, including one sold in 2006 for $22.4 million -- the previous world auction record for the artist.

Overall, Sotheby's raised 97.0 million pounds at its impressionist and modern art sale, within pre-sale estimates.

The solid total follows Christie's equivalent sale on Tuesday which raised 140 million pounds, also comfortably within expectations.

The auctions kick off a busy few weeks of sales in London, where wealthy collectors' and investors' appetite for fine art are being put to the test. The market rebounded strongly in 2010 after a sharp contraction in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis.

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