Christie’s opened the Frieze Week auction action in London on Wednesday, hosting a sale of Impressionist, Modern, and contemporary art with 52 lots (after four were withdrawn). Estimated to fetch £66.9 million to £107 million, it made £82 million ($107 million), an 83-percent increase over last year’s £44.7 million haul at the same event. (Sale prices include the buyer’s premium, estimates do not).

The jump was to be expected, as Christie’s had opted out of a major evening sale in London this summer, saying it would bolster its Frieze Week sales instead. It also broadened the scope of the sale beyond its typical focus on postwar and contemporary art to include earlier material by names like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hammershøi, Le Corbusier, and Magritte.

Going into the evening, 27 works were guaranteed, including the majority of the top 10 lots, which carried a combined low estimate of some £55 million ($71.9 million), about 82 percent of the value of the whole sale. Of the 52 lots offered, 11 sold for above estimate, 23 sold at or below their low estimate, and six passed.

Given that expectations in the current climate are low, it felt like a satisfactory performance, or as London dealer Helly Nahmad put it as he exited the salesroom: “solid.”

About a third of the sale, 17 lots, was Post-Impressionism or Modern material. That included Toulouse-Lautrec’s La Femme Tatuee (1894) from the storied Hahnloser family collection. Tagged at the last minute with a third-party guarantee, it sold below its £2.5 million ($3.27 million) estimate for £2.2 million ($2.88 million), presumably to its backer.

Lot 21, an 1896 Degas pastel of a dancer, delivered a moment of hilarity after bidding exceeded its high estimate of £600,000 ($784,000) and the pace of slowed. Its underbidder, the robust Canadian collector Francois Odermatt, seated in the room, asked his competitor, a phone bidder with New York staffer Anna Maria Celis, how much they would accept to stop the fight. Odermatt approached the rostrum to plead his case, but to no avail. The phone bidder persevered, winning the lot for £1 million ($1.31 million).

Rene Magritte’s Le Grand Style (1952), which made $3.4 million.

The selection of older work produced one of only three records in the sale, when Belgian Symbolist Léon Spilliaert’s mystical Phare sur la Digue (1908) sold for £982,800 ($1.29 million).

Adding ballast to the 19th-century’s performance was an atmospheric 1895 landscape by Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi, who’s received a market upgrade since Hauser and Wirth began showing his work. The landscape, bought at Danish auctioneers Rasmussen in 2008 for £150,000, had a £500,000 ($654,000) low estimate and no guarantee; it sold for £1.25 million ($1.63 million).

As part of the modern contingent, a Le Corbusier painting, Deux Figures au Tranc d’Arbre Jaune (1937), was looking to at least match the £2.6 million it made when it was last sold, in 2019, at Christie’s. It went for exactly that, the fifth-highest price for the artist, but it was a step down when accounting for inflation.

One of the greatest gains of the evening was made by Magritte’s Le Grand Style (1952), which sold in 1998 for £51,000 to Waddington Galleries. Since then, it changed hands once. Tonight, it went for £2.6 million ($3.4 million). The buyer was on the phone with Christie’s Xin Li, who was seen guiding actor Benedict Cumberbatch around the preview.

Li also picked up another Magritte, the tiny, shimmering Sheherazade (1947), for £882,000 ($1.15 million), twice its estimate, for the same buyer. The painting last sold in 2005 for £130,000.

Another surreal gain was for Leonor Fini’s Rogomelec (1978), which sold in Cannes in 2008 for €80,000; tonight: £907,200 ($1.19 million).

Lucian Freud’s Ria, Naked Portrait (2006–07), which sold for $15.4 million.

The second-largest segment of the sale was postwar and contemporary British art, with 13 lots. Lucian Freud topped these proceeding with a reclining nude, Ria, Naked Portrait (2006–07), which he painted in his 80s, when many think he was past his prime. It was guaranteed, and it sold for £11.8 million ($15.4 million), presumably to the guarantor, who was relaying bids through Christie’s honorary chairman Viscount Linley.

A smaller Freud portrait, Head of a Woman (1992), of Susannah Chancellor, the wife of the late Sunday Telegraph and Spectator magazine editor Alexander Chancellor, was also guaranteed and sold just below its estimate for £3.4 million ($4.45 million). The winning bidder was with Yu-Ge Wang, who advises Chinese clients for Christie’s.

David Hockney’s 2009 landscape, More Woldgate Timber, October 13, may have only just reached its estimate, selling for £4.6 million ($6.01 million), but that is a few notches up from the roughly £900,000 that a similar work fetched in 2018.

Among the younger British artists, Jenny Saville had an early Self-Portrait (1993) work on paper draw multiple bids and sell at its top estimate, for £378,000 ($494,000). It had been purchased at a 2006 Edinburgh auction for £30,000.

An Annie Morris stack (Stack 8, Viridian Green, 2021) also attracted vigorous bidding. It was part of a large consignment of works from Damien Hirst, who acquired it from Timothy Taylor in 2021, around the time her Morris’s stack sculptures started leapfrogging estimates at auction. This one, estimated at £120,000–£180,000 raced up to £302,400 ($395,000), just short of her auction record of £327,600, set Christie’s in New York in March.

Cecily Brown’s The Skin of Our Teeth (1999) proved to be slightly disappointed for its seller. Last sold in 2018, for £3 million, it went this time for a below-estimate £3.1 million ($4.05 million) to advisors Beaumont Nathan.

American art was a minor presence, but it accounted for two of the top lots, which both came from British collections. Jeff Koons’s Balloon Monkey (Blue), 2006–13, was consigned by Hirst, who bought it from Gagosian in 2007 (though it was not finished for another six years, as is the artist’s wont). Since the Koons market has been a bit soft recently, Hirst did well to get a guarantee. Only two bids were made before it sold, below estimate, to Stephanie Rao, a Mandarin-speaking member of Christie’s London staff, for £7.5 million ($9.9 million). Christie’s said that 22 percent of the night’s buyers were from Asia.

Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy) (1997) finished at £2.1 million ($2.7 million) with fees against a (fees-fee) top estimate of £1.8 million ($2.35 million). Photo courtesy Christie’s

Hirst also consigned two works by Richard Prince. A 1997 Ektacolor print, Untitled (Cowboy), sold in 2006 for $744,000 at Phillips to Gagosian (from whom Hirst acquired it), delivered a return, selling for £2.1 million ($2.7 million). Hirst bought Prince’s Hurricane Nurse (2004) from Sadie Coles in 2006. Carrying the highest estimate yet for a “nurse” painting, it slightly underperformed, selling below estimate for £4.2 million ($5.5 million).

The other British consignor of American art was rock star Eric Clapton. A late de Kooning painting, Untitled XV111 (1986), which he bought for £2.7 million in 2008, sold for below its estimate, and for a minimal gain, at £3.5 million ($4.5 million).

Sarah Sze’s huge, three-part mixed-media Spell (2023), sold for £756,000 ($988,000), an auction record, according to Christie’s, just ahead of what it made at a benefit last year to help preserve Nina Simone’s childhood home.

Another record was claimed for the Afro Brazilian artist Antonio Oba, making only his second appearance at auction, after his first work sold in New York in May for $228,600, far above its estimate. In London tonight, an untitled 2019 painting replete with religious symbolism went within a more bullish estimate for £138,600 ($181,000).

Postwar and contemporary European art was strangely lacking. Competition emerged for a large 2015 oil on paper, Planting Day, by Neo Rauch, which Hirst was also selling. It made £403,200 ($527,000) against a £200,000 low estimate.

Katherine Arnold and Keith Gill, who led the sale for Christie’s, rated it a success. “We sourced fresh-to-the-market works that resonated with collectors globally and priced them fairly,” they said in a statement.