Lloyd Webber to Sell $60.9 Million Picasso Portrait for Charity
By Scott Reyburn
March 17 (Bloomberg) -- A Pablo Picasso painting of an absinthe drinker owned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s charity foundation may fetch as much as 40 million pounds ($60.9 million) at a London auction in June.

The “Blue Period” canvas is the most highly estimated work of art to be offered at auction in Europe, Christie’s International said today in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

Picasso was the world’s No. 1 artist at auction in 2009, generating $121 million in sales, according to the French-based database Artprice. In May 2004, the artist’s slightly later 1905 Rose Period painting “Garcon a la Pipe” sold at Sotheby’s, New York, for $104.2 million, a record for any artwork at auction.



“A ‘Blue Period’ Picasso is the sort of painting that could appeal to a new Chinese buyer,” Giovanna Bertazzoni, head of Christie’s London-based Impressionist and modern department, said in an interview. “There is a new breed of Medici-style collectors who want to buy exceptional art from any period.”

The 1903 “Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto (The Absinthe Drinker),” a freely painted study of a raffish young Spanish artist sitting in a bar in Barcelona, will be included in a June 23 auction of Impressionist and modern art.

The lower presale valuation is 30 million pounds. Proceeds will benefit Lloyd Webber’s charity, which promotes arts, culture and heritage in the U.K.



Picasso’s portrait of his party-loving friend, who was killed in the Spanish Civil War, had been purchased by the foundation at Sotheby’s auction of the Stralem Collection in New York in May 1995. It was bought for $29.2 million using funds donated by the composer himself, said Christie’s.



Nazi Claim

The work had been scheduled to be sold by the Lloyd Webber Foundation at Christie’s New York in November 2006, estimated at $40 million to $60 million. It was withdrawn after a German academic claimed it was forcibly sold to the Nazis in the mid- 1930s.

Lawyers for Julius Schoeps filed a lawsuit in New York’s state Supreme Court in Manhattan on Nov. 8, 2006, claiming he was the “lawful and rightful owner” of the Picasso. According to the complaint, Schoeps was an heir of Paul von Mendelssohn- Bartholdy, a Jewish banker in Berlin.

At the time, the foundation said: “The best evidence suggests that the portrait was sold by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s second wife Elsa, who was not Jewish,” in 1935, after the banker’s death.



Dispute Settled

The ownership dispute was resolved in December 2009, and a settlement announced between the heirs and the Trustees of the foundation. The claimants withdrew claims to the painting, with the agreement details being kept confidential, said Christie’s.

The composer of works such as “Cats” is one of the U.K.’s few music millionaires whose fortune was little changed in the financial crisis, according to last year’s Sunday Times Rich List. Lloyd Webber’s wealth was estimated at 750 million pounds, unchanged from 2008, said the ranking, published in April 2009.



The Picasso was included in the selection of works from Lloyd Webber’s collection exhibited at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 2003. The collection is best-known for its Victorian- period Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

“The art market has changed radically since the purchase of the painting by Lord Lloyd Webber in 1995,” Jussi Pylkkanen, President of Christie’s Europe, Russia and the Middle East, said in an e-mail. “Collectors have become ever more focused on iconic museum quality works.”



Safra’s Statue

Last month, Sotheby’s achieved a artist-record price of 65 million pounds for Alberto Giacometti’s bronze “Walking Man I,” selling to a telephone buyer identified by dealers as the billionaire collector Lily Safra.

“The owner of the Picasso saw the results in London in February and thought it was the perfect time to sell,” said Bertazzoni.

Christie’s has sold just four major Blue Period works by Picasso in the last 22 years, said Bertazzoni. The painting wasn’t guaranteed, she said.



The sale will follow Christie’s auction in New York in May of the $150-million collection of the Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody. Picasso’s 1936 painting of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter, “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur,” is expected to sell for more than $80 million. The sellers of the Brody collection have been guaranteed an undisclosed minimum price by Christie’s.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.

Last Updated: March 17, 2010 05:30 EDT