Summer art market madness kicks off - beautiful artworks change hands

Sotheby's Holdings Inc. took in 88.8 million pounds (US $164 million) tonight in their sales of Modern Art and Impressionists with 600 swells attending. Pre - Auction values were 65 million pounds to 90 million pounds.

U.S. collector Marvin Schein's Modigliani, ``Jeanne Hebuterne (au Chapeau),'' an exquisite 1919 portrait of the artist's long-necked mistress in a hat and scooped blouse, sold to a telephone bidder for 16.4 million pounds, including commission. Sotheby's top estimate was 12 million pounds.

Schein a New York's Metropolitan Museum bebefactor paid a hammer price of $8.7 million for the picture at a 1997 Sotheby's sale in New York. You can buy a decent printed reproduction for US$50 and an oil copy for US$2,000.

Christie's will hold their sale of Impressionist and modern works tomorrow, including Egon Schiele's painting of wilted sunflowers, with a top estimate of 6 million pounds.

Owned by Austrian art collector Karl Gruenwald, and friend of Scheile, "Wilted Sunflowers (Autumn Sun II)" was part of a collection of work stored in France that was confiscatedby the Nazis and sold in 1942, four years after the owner Gruenwald, fled to the country during World War II.

When the painting's most recent owner requested a valuation it was identified as the long lost painting.

The owner now wants to remain anonymous and the painting was officially restituted to Gruenwald's family and descendants in February.

Copies are not avialable.