Chinese painting sells for $241,000 at Vancouver auction

Winston Churchill's autograph is seen in a 19th-century autograph book on display in Vancouver, Wednesday, Sept., 11, 2013. The autograph book containing the signatures of 300 famous and powerful visitors to the White House has sold at auction for nearly double its asking price.

A traditional Chinese “ink scroll painting” sold for $241,000 at a Maynards auction in Vancouver Wednesday, doubling its pre-auction estimate.

The painting by Guan Shanyue was the high point of Maynards’ fall sale of Antiques and International and Asian Art, which brought $926,242 from 568 lots.

A 19th century autograph book that once belonged to Major Charles D.A. Loeffler, the head doorkeeper to the U.S. President’s office from 1869 to 1909, sold for $25,300. It contained over 300 autographs from luminaries like Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

A trio of beautiful ivory, bronze and onyx art deco sculptures by German artist Johann Philipp Ferdinand Preiss also did very well, selling for $ 21,850 (for Con Brio), $23,000 (for Torch Dancer) and $9,775 (for Clock with Arab Servants). All date to about 1920.

A 70 million year old triceratops dinosaur skull from the late Cretaceous Period brought $63,250. It was consigned by a museum in Japan.

Bhupen Khakhar painting fetches Rs 2 cr in New York sale

Bhupen Kakkar's seminal oil-on- -canvas painting titled 'American Survey Officer' has been sold for Rs 2.54 crore (USD 401,000), almost double of what it was estimated to fetch after a prolonged battle, by six bidders at Sotheby's recent auction here.

The Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art sale held on September 18 fetched the auctioneers a total of USD 3.2 million (USD 3,261,375), well below the pre-sale estimate of USD 3.6 million to USD 5 million.

"We saw strong prices for high calibre works by senior modern artists including Bhupen Khakhar, Maqbool Fida Husain and Francis Newton Souza, reinforcing the quest for quality in the field," Priyanka Mathew, vice president, head of sales, Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art said in a statement.

"Six bidders fought for the cover lot, Bhupen Khakhar's American Survey Officer, which after a prolonged battle, sold for USD 4,001,000, almost double the pre-sale high estimate," she said.

This is the first Indian art sale in New York after the Amaya Collection sale earlier this year, the first global evening sale of Indian art which fetched almost USD 6.7 million.

According to the auctioneers, Khakkar's painting which had been estimated to fetch between USD 1,80,000- USD 2,20,000, is representative of a critical moment in the artist's career as he developed a local and idiosyncratic language for Pop Art in India.

An Untitled landscape by Francis Newton Souza, painted during his travel through Italy fetched USD 2,21,000.

However, Souza's historically significant Sabartes after Picasso; After Pablo Picasso, (estimate USD 100,000- USD 150,000) which once belonged to Harold Kovner, an American collector who was Souza's leading patron between 1956 and 1960, remained unsold.

Souza's contemporaries like M F Husain also fetched sales. Two paintings by Husain untitled "Mother Theresa" sold for USD 2,45,000 and USD 34,375 respectively.

An iconic representation by Manjit Bawa of Apu, the mascot for the 1982 Asian Games 1982 is estimated to go under the hammer for USD 200,000 to USD 280,000 fetched USD 149,000 and two works from Ram Kumar's Varanasi series fetched over USD 100,000.

A Ramachandran's 1981 dynamic six by twelve foot canvas painting "Kalinga War" sourced from a European private collection and estimated at USD 180,000- USD 200,000 did not find any buyers.