Auction houses around the world have been counting on rising Chinese collectors to bid up art prices regardless of the turmoil in financial markets, but a disappointing Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong for an art collection owned by one of China's richest couples suggests that could change.
Sotheby's on Thursday sold 39 pieces from the collection of Shanghai real estate and pharmaceutical billionaire Liu Yiqian and his wife Wang Wei for a total of $70 million, well below the company's $94.4 million estimate. The Amedeo Modigliani painting 'Paulette Jourdain,' which the couple bought eight years ago for $42.8 million, fetched just $34.8 million.
Ten works by artists including David Hockney, Stanley Whitney and Zao Ou-ki went unsold; Many of these people's works are in museum collections. More than a dozen other works sold for less than the asking price, and buyers of works by star artists Mark Bradford and Javier Calleja made just one bid.
That raises questions about how active Chinese bidders will be at New York auctions later this fall, said Michael Plummer, art finance adviser at Artvest in New York. Plummer said there had been concerns before the Hong Kong auction and the final result added to those concerns.
China's rising class of entrepreneurial billionaires has become internationally known for investing their newfound wealth in art. Mr. Liu, the chairman of the investment entity Sunline Group, is a former Shanghai taxi driver who made his name in the early 1990s by investing heavily in Chinese stocks, real estate and pharmaceutical companies. He also started buying traditional Chinese artifacts, mostly at auction.
In 2014, he made an international splash when he paid $36.3 million by credit card to Sotheby's Hong Kong for a Ming Dynasty chicken cup. Photos of him drinking tea from the same chicken cup later went viral online. He told The Wall Street Journal at the time that he just wanted to know what it felt like.
His other high-profile purchase came in 2015, when he paid $170.4 million at Christie's for another Modigliani painting, "Naked Woman Lying on Her Side." Mr. Liu's wife, Wang Wei, who has long admired Chinese revolution-themed art, urged him to add Western modern and contemporary art to their collection.
Today, Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang are best known in the art world for showcasing their collection of traditional Asian art and international masterpieces at their private art Museum, the Long Museum. The couple founded the Long Museum in 2012 and now has venues in Shanghai and Chongqing, with Ms. Wang as its director.
Nicolas Chow, chairman of Sotheby's Asia and international head of its Asian art department, said Thursday's sale included Chinese and Western modern and contemporary art from Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang's private collections, and did not include the Long collection. Mr. Chow said Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang planned to keep the Long Museum open to the public and use some of the proceeds from the sale for an undisclosed amount to buy more art.
Mr. Chow, speaking on behalf of Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang, said the couple's offering on Thursday represented less than 1 percent of their vast collection.
While the Modigliani they bought for $170.4 million didn't come up for auction this time, the story behind the purchase illustrates the energy and support that Chinese billionaires have brought to the international art scene. In the Christie's sale, 10 works that failed to find buyers were left untouched, including a portrait of Lucian Freud that had been expected to sell for at least $20 million, There is also a painting by Willem de Kooning called 'Woman,' which was expected to sell for at least $14 million.
After the sale, the art world relished the seven-minute battle over Modigliani's work. The work had been expected to sell for $100 million. Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang, as well as a bid from a young South Korean dealer, Hong Gyu Shin, the work sold for much more than expected.
Now, if Chinese buyers can't splash out at auctions as they have in the past, it's unclear how this autumn's big evening sales will fare. Sotheby's said that between 2018 and 2022, nearly a third of the collectors who bid more than $1 million were from Asia. This year alone, Asians have won half of its top 10 modern and contemporary art auctions, the auction house said. Many of those buyers also came from Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, said Alex Branczik, chairman of Sotheby's modern and contemporary art department in Asia.
'It's too early to count out Chinese buyers,' Mr. Branczik said. In June, Chinese buyers kept their hands on some of the most expensive works at London's summer auctions, including a Hong Kong buyer who paid $108.4 million for Gustav Klimt's 1917-18 "LadyWithaFan," or "Lady Withafan." That compares with Sotheby's estimate of $80 million. The price set a new record for European art at auction.
However, Mr Plummer said the fact that a high-profile couple of collectors in China had decided to offload their art collection this autumn, including works bought only a few years ago, would do little to soothe the market's anxieties, especially when so many collections had performed poorly at auction.
China's economy is still suffering from shrinking exports and a troubled property sector. Recently, the World Bank cut its forecast for China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2024 from 4.8% to 4.4%. In a report, the bank said economic growth across East Asia and the Pacific was also slowing more quickly than expected.
Thursday's sale follows poor sales at this year's spring auctions and mixed results at a week-long series of Asian art sales in New York last month. During its annual Asian Art Week in September, Sotheby's sold 87 percent of the lots in its $2.2 million sale of Chinese ceramics and furniture on Sept. 26, but only 68 percent in its Tibetan antiques sale and 39 percent in its Korean ceramics sale. Overall, the Asian art sale brought in a total of $30.4 million, within Sotheby's pre-sale expectations of $23.4 million to $34.3 million.
Christie's Asian art sale in New York last month fared slightly better, finding buyers for 78% of the $35 million worth of lots. But only four of the week's expected star lots, "Marchant: Eight Treasures for the Wanli Emperor," sold.
The next event to reflect the heat of the art market will be the Frieze fair in London, which opens on Oct. 11.