£13m Degas dancer proves art market still has legs

APPLAUSE rang out at the big winter sale at Sotheby's of Impressionist and Modern Art when four bidders sent the price of a Degas bronze dancer up to £13.2 million - a runaway record for any sculpture by him.

The smiles and clapping for a bidder on the phone at the London auction from Japan was not just happiness, it was surprise.

The price was double what the seller Sir John Madejski paid for the sculpture, The Little Dancer of 14 Years, in 2004 and was only one bid from topping the £13.5 million high estimate.

More to the point, it told art owners who arrived at Sotheby's in open fear that the millionaires' market in Impressionists was in free fall after the New York auctions last November that crisis might yet be averted. "It's not dead, there's a lot of life in this market yet," said Sotheby's chairman and auctioneer Henry Wyndham. The boost came from a sharp markdown of estimates from last autumn and from a weak pound, which attracted heavy bidding in euros and dollars.

The outcome was a £32.5 million auction for 30 artworks, three-quarters of which found new buyers. Sotheby's lifted the world record from £7.44 million to £13,257,260 for the Degas dancer, of which 29 casts were made from the original wax model in 1879.

The fantastic run of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art in defiance of the credit crunch was abruptly reversed in November but last night halted a further slide, at least for now. It suggested that art buyers are ready to pay new, lower prices for safe and bankable "no risk" purchases. The Degas was one. So shocking to late Victorians, it is now one of the world's most famous sculptures.

It was denounced in 1880, however, as bestial, vicious and ugly in Paris newspapers. One attacked "the lecherous little snout on this barely pubescent young girl, this little flower of the gutter".

In 2009 she is a masterpiece and a "safe buy". Picasso also looked like a "safe haven" artist when six bidders sent his Tete d'Homme Barbu to £612,450 when its high estimate was £500,000. Other high scorers were surrealists Magritte and Miro.

"It was a pretty good night, non?" said David Nahmad, the world number one Impressionist dealer by sales. This may be the first happy remark by a billionaire to go on the record this year.