A silver gilt and enamel cigar case, Moscow 1881 showing a photograph of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna with her children is displayed. This afternoon, Russian Art Sales Series concluded bringing a total of £19.3/$31.9 million – near the high estimate (£14,882,080-21,246,220) – and established a healthy sell-through-rate of 74% overall.

Jeff Koons, “Elephant” (Purple). Estimate: 300,000 – 400,000 Euros One of the major events at Sotheby’s this Autumn promises to be the sale in Paris on December 8 of a unique work by Jeff Koons: “Elephant” (Purple), donated by the artist to the Foundation Claude Pompidou in 2009. This masterpiece from 1999 (estimate €300,000-400,000) will [...]

Marsden Hartley (1877 – 1943), “Mountains No. 22″, 1930. Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches (76.2 x 91.4 cm). Est. $800,000/1.2 million. Sotheby’s auction of American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture on 3 December 2009 will offer collectors a rich array of works by American artists from the 19th and 20th centuries. The auction includes [...]

Artist Damien Hirst stands in The Wallace Collection at his ‘No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst’ exhibition. The art critics ripped into Damien Hirst’s new show at the Wallace Collection as if his notorious sharks in formaldehyde had escaped their elegant glass prisons and were determined to wreak bloody revenge on their creator. [...]

“Large Vase of Flowers,” by artist Jeff Koons, an exquisitely colorful, vibrant work with complex allusions to social hierarchies, taste, life cycles, and sex, ultimately sold for $5,682,500. Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled $74,151,500/£44,669,578/€49,766,107. Works by artists Peter Doig, Jeff Koons, and Joan Mitchell commanded the top prices. In addition, new world [...]