New auction record for a print by Paul Gauguin

Yesterday morning at Sotheby’s in London, ten prints by Paul Gauguin from the Collection of Stanley J. Seeger, sold for £1.54 million ($2.47 million), almost four times the pre-sale low estimate for the group.

A new auction record for a print by Paul Gauguin was achieved when ‘Crouching Tahitian Woman Seen From The Back’ sold for £577,250 ($924,466), over three times the estimate (£180,000-220,000).

The traced monotype, or “printed drawing”, was fiercely contested by a number of determined bidders, finally selling to a private collector on the telephone after a five-minute battle.

Earlier in the sale, there was much excitement surrounding a pair of rare woodcuts by Albrecht Durer, widely considered the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance. The earliest printed star charts, A Map of the Northern Sky and A Map of the Southern Sky, sold for £361,250 ($578,542) to Daniel Crouch Rare Books, over three times the low estimate. The price achieved established a new record for a woodcut by Dürer at auction.