Matisse painting fetches record price tag

A painting by Henri Matisse sold for €32.1m, a record price for a work by the French artist at auction – at a sale of art from the estate of Yves Saint Laurent, auction house Christie’s said.

The sale came at the start of a three-day Paris auction of art from the collection of the late French fashion designer that some are calling “the sale of the century”.

A Piet Mondrian painting that had inspired one of Saint Laurent’s most memorable dresses sold for nearly €20m.

Sales reached €206m in the auction’s first day - marked by six world record prices for works by individual artists at auction, Christie’s said.

Fierce bidding in the cavernous, glass-topped Grand Palais museum hall quieted concerns that the global financial crisis might damage the auction’s prospects.

“I never doubted the success of this sale,” Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s longtime partner, told reporters after the auction.

“When you have a collection of this importance, and of this demand, you stop being an amateur art lover – and you become more or less an expert.”

Matisse’s 1911 oil painting Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose, (The Cowslips, Blue and Rose Fabric) sold for a total of €35.9m, including the buyer’s premium, Christie’s said.

Mondrian’s 1922 painting Composition in Blue, Red, Yellow and Black, with rectangles of saturated colours that had inspired Saint Laurent’s 1965 shift dress, sold for €19.2m, or roughly twice the pre-auction estimate.

Christie’s officials said they were still working on confirming the identities of the buyers, who mostly came from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The night’s big surprise was that the lot that had been expected to fetch the highest price – a 1914-1915 Picasso Instruments de musique sur un gueridon, (Musical Instruments on a Table) – didn’t even sell.

The painting of a guitar from the Spanish artist’s cubist period had been estimated to sell for €25m to €30m, but the bidding never got past €21m. Mr Berge said he and Saint Laurent bought the painting themselves from Picasso.

“I don’t understand” why the Picasso didn’t sell, Mr Berge confessed, before adding: “I hope that I’m not going to surprise you because I am very happy that I can keep this painting.”