Christie’s Falls Short

Last night Christie’s sold $65.6m worth of Impressionist and modern art at its New York auction house – but it fell $3m shy of its pre-sale estimate of $68.6m. “Nobody wanted the night’s priciest work, a ruby-red portrait of Pablo Picasso’s wartime lover Dora Maar, ‘Tête de femme,’ that was expected to sell for at least $7 million. The painting stalled at $6.4 million. Instead, top honors went to Edgar Degas, whose 1896 peach-colored pastel of two ballerinas, ‘Danseuses,’ sold to a private Asian collector for $10.7 million, surpassing its $9 million high estimate.”