Phillips Photographs London 21, Results
The final photography auction of the year was hosted by Phillips London, with a billing of over 100 lots from celebrated artists such as Irving Penn, Wolfgang Tillmans, Helmut Newton and Terry O’Neill. The auction came with estimates as low at £800 and as high as £350,000. The auction took place on 23 November in London and brought in a combined sales total of £2,880,423 ($3,842,743).
The highest priced lot was Helmut Newton’s Charlotte Rampling at the Hotel Nord-Pinus, Arles, France 1973, which was given the highest estimate of the auction at £250,000 to £350,000 but exceeded the top estimate by raising a hammer price of £441,000 ($588,333), making it one of the top five most expensive lots of the year.
The big story of the auction, however, was the collection of Irving Penn photographs, which were showcased in Phillips’ Ultimate: Irving Penn exhibition. The body of work was ‘a carefully curated selection of 10 exceptional platinum-palladium prints from master photographer Irving Penn’s iconic Small Trades series. Taken in 1950-51 and self-printed in 1967 — the year in which Penn perfected the platinum-palladium process — these long sold-out works have been in the same private collection for over a decade and are appearing at auction for the first time’.
The prints from the collection were given individual estimates ranging from £30,000-£50,000 to £50,000-£70,000. A host of these prints, however, sold for much higher than that. At least five saw a hammer price over £100,000.
The second most expensive lot was Irving Penn’s Milkman (A), New York, with an original estimate of £30,000 to £50,000 and a hammer price of £151,200 ($201,447) – three times higher than the top estimate. Coming in third was another Irving Penn lot, this time the Barber, New York, with an initial estimate of £30,000 to £50,000 and a sale price of £138,600 ($184,904). Seven of the top ten most expensive lots at this auction were Irving Penn prints.
Browse all of the lots from this auction at Phillips’ website here. Keep an eye on Photography At Auction in the coming weeks as we bring together the most expensive lots of the year, the biggest talking points and the Photography At Auction Digest‘s highlights.
image by Christopher Ott