London â€" A brooding self-portrait that the Italian-born artist Rudolf Stingel painted in 2007 sold at Phillips auction house here on Thursday night for about $993,345 or $1.2 million with fees. The price was just above its low $919,000 estimate.
Dressed in a suit, holding a lit cigar with a pensive, faraway stare, “Untitled (Bolego)’’ was one of finest works in an otherwise tepid sale. The Italian-born Mr. Stingel has had a high profile this summer. In Venice he covered the Palazzo Grassi with his own Persian-inspired carpeting on which he hung his abstract and Photo Realist paintings. The exhibition became one of the most popular events during the preview days of the Biennale. (The exhibition is on view there until the end of the year.)
Earlier this month at Art Basel, other self-portraits by him were for sale in several galleries. Three of his works, each priced around $2 million â€" at Massimo De Carlo, a gallery with spaces in Milan and London; Sadie Coles from London; and the Gaosian Gallery â€" were reported sold within the first few days of the fair. (Some of them were considerably larger, about 8-feet by 10-feet.) Still, the price an unidentified telephone bidder paid at Phillips on Thursday night seemed cheap by comparison. “Perhaps there was resistance to its small size,’’ said Michael McGinnis, the auction house’s chief executive after the sale. (The canvas measured only about 1.2-feet by 1.7-feet.) “We had a ton of people interested in the painting but when it came time to bid they disappeared,’’ he said. “It’s quite an intimate painting.’’
(Final prices include the buyer’s commission to Phillips: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
