Among the most valuable lots of the evening were the Riggios’ Piet Mondrian, Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, from 1922, which made $47.6 million with fees. That’s slightly below the $50.6 million and $51 million paid for similar works in 2015 and 2022. Claude Monet’s Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, crépuscule, from 1891, made nearly $43 million with fees. The guarantor seemed to come in at $28 million, but it looked like the actual guarantee lay at $30 million. It didn’t matter: There was determined bidding from Keith Gill’s client, leaving the guarantor to make a final bid at $32 million before another specialist tried to snipe the lot at $33 million. Gill’s client would not be dissuaded, however, and kept bidding until he reached a $37 million hammer price and a new record for a poplar work. By comparison, Anne Bass’s autumn version of Monet’s poplars sold for just over $36 million in 2022; the next year, another version sold for just shy of $31 million. The Mark Rothko painting from the Bass house, No. 4 (Two Dominants) [Orange, Plum, Black], from 1951, was backstopped early with a third-party guarantee. If I had to guess from the bidding, the guarantee was at $32 million, but Wendy Goldsmith, the advisor formerly based in London and now in Palm Beach, got bids in early. In the end, she topped the guarantor by half a million. As with the Monet, it seemed telling that the guarantors were not up for much additional bidding. One result that has to be a relief for the market is that the Riggios’ Magritte sold again for just under $35 million, the same price the couple paid a year and a half ago. This demonstrates that some pricing is stable and there is a depth of buyers for certain works. Meanwhile, the Riggios’ Picasso painting of photographer Lee Miller, one of a series painted on successive days in September of 1937, was estimated at $20 million. Five bidders, including Jeffrey Deitch and Rebecca Wei bidding in the room, chased it up to a $24 million hammer price. It sold to a telephone bidder at the highest price for the series, beating the $24.5 million paid in 2023 and the nearly $14 million paid in 2022 for very different versions of the same subject matter. The Riggios’ Giacometti Femme de Venise I, from an edition of six works cast in 1958, was chased by four bidders, but still made only the $15 million estimate, and sold for under $18 million. Their big Magritte, Les droits de l’homme, from 1947-48, was sold at a compromise price of $13.5 million hammer against a $15 million estimate, for just about $16 million with fees. One of the surprise performers of the night was Gerhard Richter’s 1968 romantic painting Korsika (Schiff), which slipped into the sales almost unnoticed. Clearly, though, two collectors were paying attention, because an extended bidding war between telephones glued to the ears of Katharine Arnold and Alex Rotter took the bidding from a $9 million estimate to a nearly $13 million final bid. Along the way, Francis Outred lobbed in a late bid from the audience, only to have the two bidders continue along over the top of him. The final selling price for the Richter was just about $15 million. The last two lots among the top 10 prices were sculptures from the Riggio collection, both of which sold for prices at the low estimates. Giacometti’s Composition avec trois figures et une tête (La Place), an edition of six cast in 1952, surpassed its $9 million estimate and sold for nearly $11 million with fees. And Barbara Hepworth’s substantial bronze, The Family of Man: Figure 2, Ancestor II, cast in 1974, sold for its $8 million estimate, or nearly $10 million with fees.