Bidding for Humpback Spinster Tells her Old Memories to Herbert, which has been in a private collection for 40 years, started at HUF 50 million.
The previous record for a Gulácsy painting was held by Woman Playing on an Old Instrument which was sold for HUF 95 million, also by the Judit Virág Gallery, when it was called Mű-Terem.
Two more Gulácsys were sold at the auction: Old Garden in Verona, from a collection in the US, sold for HUF 22 million, and Landscape with Cloister, which went for HUF 6.5 million.
The second-highest price at the auction was for a fauvist picture of an artist colony in Kecskemét painted by Vilmos Csaba Perlrott in 1911. Bidding for the painting started at HUF 20 million and it was sold for HUF 36 million.
An often-reproduced oil and pastel painting by Béla Kondor entitled Erzsi fetched HUF 22 million, and László Mednyánszky's 1915 work Soldiers Passing under the Sparkling Snowy Mountains also went for more than HUF 20 million. The Mednyánszky painting was part of a retrospective of the artist's life works organised by Hungary's National Gallery in 2003.
Many works at the auction went for three or even four times their starting price. The starting bid for a work by János Vaszary was HUF 3 million, but it fetched HUF 12 million. A nude by the same artist went for HUF 17 million, HUF 5 million more than the starting bid.
A still life with flowers by József Koszta started out at HUF 2.8 million, but was sold for HUF 11 million. A pastel portrait by József Rippl-Rónai fetched HUF 17 million, HUF 10 million more than the starting bid.
Works by three renowned foreign artists - Gustav Klimt, Armand Guillaumin and Demetre Chiparus - were also included among the lots. Neither a Klimt nor an important French impressionist such as Guillaumin has been offered at auction in Hungary for more than 60 years, and the statute by Chiparus, one of the most famous representatives of the art deco style, was the first ever offered in Hungary. Klimt's drawing of a reclining female nude sold for HUF 19 million, Guillaumin's landscape of Damiette went for HUF 26 million and Chiparus's female bronze was sold for HUF 20 million.
