The total came in just over the rosiest combined estimate for the event, $738.6 million.
Christie’s newly outfitted salesroom—notably smaller than usual to allow for capped attendance—is virtually unrecognizable to anyone used to the house’s Chippendale-style wooden rostrums and phone banks.
All 23 works in the collection had been guaranteed by the house; outside backers stepped in to take on the risk for three of them.
The sale pulled in a total of $332 million with premium, surpassing the $267.6 million high estimate.
The highest price of the evening, $71.4 million, was paid for Cabanes de bois parmi les oliviers et cyprès followed four lots later, climbing to a final price of $35.9 million.
Another, far less typical work by Van Gogh—a portrait of a rosy-cheeked young man with a cornflower between his lips—also shattered expectations.
The Getty Museum purchased the final lot of the Cox sale, Gustave Caillebotte’s Jeune homme à sa fenêtre , a rare and imposing painting of the artist’s brother gazing out a window from the family’s residence in Paris.
The official estimate was revised down slightly after one lot, a work by Alexander Calder, was withdrawn.
One of these third-party backed works was the top lot of the sale, Andy Warhol’s 1982 silkscreen portrait of contemporary art star Jean-Michel Basquiat, estimated to take around $20 million.
Christie’s pulled out all the stops to advertise the work, even unveiling it at the Basquiat-themed Crown Club at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn.
Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild sold for a premium-inclusive $27.2 million, on the low end of its $25 million-to-$35 million estimate range, likely to its third-party guarantor.
It appears to have been consigned by art dealer Helly Nahmad, who exhibited it in his booth at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019.
Nahmad was seen bidding on, but was not the winner of, another Picasso on offer, Profil , sold by the Regents of the University of California to benefit future acquisitions for the UCLA Grunwald Center and Hammer Museum.