Degas bronze fails to find auction buyer

High profile art is under the microscope in New York this week, with several works by prominent artists left unsold during the current fall auction season.

At Christie's impressionist and modern art sale Tuesday night, Little Dancer (La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans)a bronze by French impressionist Edgar Degasfailed to sell.

Purportedly the only sculpture Degas ever exhibited in his lifetime, the standing ballerina statuette is one of 28 editions cast in bronze. The majority are owned by museums and just 10 are held by private individuals.

The bronze on offer Tuesday, one of the privately owned versions, had been expected to fetch upwards of $25 million US.

Though Max Ernst's 1941 painting The Stolen Mirror sold to a European collector for $16.3 million US, a record for the artist, a Pablo Picasso portrait of one of his lovers, an Alberto Giacometti sculpture of a woman and a Henri Matisse painting failed to sell.

Overall, more than a third of the 82 Christie's lots on offer failed to find buyers. The auction house had estimated the evening would fetch up to $304 million US, but it ended with sales of$140.8 million US.

Industry eyes will be on the Sotheby's sale Wednesday night, with two works in particular of interest to Canadians: a Toronto collector's massive Picasso nude L'Aubade (Dawn Song), expected to sell for more than $18 million US, and a Montreal man's Gustav Klimt painting Litzlberg am Attersee (Litzlberg on the Attersee), valued at $25 million US and recently restored to him as sole heir of its original owner.