Phillip’s Ultimate Evening & Photographs Day Sales Results May 2018

Phillips’ Ultimate Evening & Photographs Day Sale took place in London on Friday with 172 lots available, including several Polaroid pictures. The auction realised a sales total of £3.5 million which is the highest ever result for a Photographs sale in London. 

Helmut Newton’s Panoramic Nude with Gun, Villa d’Este, Como was the highest priced sale at £729,000 (with an original estimate of £250,000-£350,000) and became this year’s first entry into the top 50 Most Expensive Photographs Sold at Auction list. The high price tag may be attributed to its rarity, according to Phillips

‘this work is the only known extant print of this unpublished variant’

causing a bidding war resulting in a sale just shy of $1 million ($981,884), and making it a world record for the artist. The previous record price for this image came in 2015 at $905,000.

Other high-priced sales came from Robert Mapplethorpe for his Double Tiger Lily, 1977 which sold for £297,000 with an original estimate of £150,000-£250,000, and Peter Beard’s Downwind on the Tiva Lugga, Tsavo North near Kathamula which sold for £187,500 with an original estimate of £150,000-£250,000.

Other records were broken at this auction including an artist record for Ishiuchi Miyako’s 絶唱 、横須賀ストーリー Yokosuka Story, which sold £106,250 with an estimate of £70,000-£90,000. The previous record price for this image was set in 2015 at $27,500.

James Caseberre’s Green Staircase, sold at this auction for £10,000

View all lots in this auction at Phillips’ web page here.