Spring auction season enjoys Rosy beginning.

Although this space is generally reserved for art on display in Mexico, when a painting sells for 100 million dollars, it warrants an exception.

When the Sotheby's gavel fell after seven minutes of bidding one night last month in New York, an unidentified buyer had committed US$104 million for a Rose Period Picasso, the haunting "Boy with a Pipe."

The sale made international headlines, as it marks the highest price ever paid for a work of art (Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," however, sold for US$82.5 million in 1990, which would exceed US$116 when adjusted for inflation). Many observers on the auction scene--in which the line between business and art is always blurred--say the sale indicated not only a revival in the high-end art market, but the U.S. and international economies in general.

The reasoning stands that if high rollers have millions to drop on oil and canvas, then the elite are in a spending mood, thus fueling employment, investment and pumping up various other macroeconomic indicators.

The list of rumored buyers included various leaders of the banking world, casino owner Stephen Wynn and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Although the Azcarraga family of Televisa fame is well known for its taste in outrageously expensive art and phone bids came in from around the globe, no Mexicans were considered among the contenders for the early Pablo Picasso masterpiece.

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"Boy With a Pipe" (painted in 1904, when the Spaniard was just 24) was the centerpiece of the Whitney Collection, comprised of 34 pieces of superlative Impressionist, American and Modern art belonging to the estate of American blueblood John Hay Whitney and his wife, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney. When the evening, which kicked off the spring art auction season worldwide, was concluded, US$190 million of art had been sold, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Whitney charity, the Greentree Foundation.

MANET IN THE LIVING ROOM

The collection, one of the largest in American still in private hands, was assembled entirely through inheritance money, first by Payne and Helen Hay Whitney, heirs to a fortune made from oil, tobacco and streetcars, and later by their aforementioned high-living ambassador son, who died in 1982. At her death in 1998, the Roosevelt Whitney widow bequeathed art valued at over US$300 million to several prominent museums.

Prior to that, many of the paintings simply hung in open view in their various homes, defining the ultimate in highclass decoration. Only the Havemeyers (emphasis on the "have") rivaled the Whitneys for one family's art holdings in the Americans, having been one of the first collectors of French Impressionist Art.

The Whitney's personal taste ran throughout the show, with several pieces reflecting John Hay Whitney's passion for horseracing. In addition to his purchases of top Thoroughbreds (his Greentree Stable produced 1950s champion Tom Fool), he bought Impressionistic likenesses of them as well.

In 1936, he paid the then-staggering sum of US$70,000 for Edouard Manet's "Courses au Bois de Boulogne" (opposite page, bottom). The work captures an afternoon at the Paris-area track Longchamps in 1872 and excited particular interest as it features the artist's friend Edgar Degas (visible in top hat in lower righthand corner). Sotheby's sold it for US$26 million.

The "Red Prince Mare" by Brit Alfred Munnings (pictured at right) brought a record bid for a sporting painting. (The Manet canvas is considered a landscape work, although some critics believe the "sporting painting" label is perceived in the art world as slightly derogatory and thus would never be assigned to the work of a giant such as Manet.)

The 1921 painting, which was expected to bring in somewhere around half-a-million dollars, attracted an unidentified buyer--don't any of these guys want publicity? Maybe they don't want the hassle of upgrading their home security system--at US$7.8 million, which is also a record price for a Munnings work. It was also one of several works to exceed Sotheby's parameters for bidding, set to determine if the work will be sold or not.

As testament to the quality of the Whitney works and the open market's demand for them, only two of the 34 works from the Whitney Collection did not meet the low threshold (which generally began in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) and failed to sell.

STARVING ARTIST RECOGNIZED

Other artists enjoyed record sales as well, as bidding was particularly fierce for smaller pieces, for those collectors willing to throw down a million or two. But really, it was the rich and high-brow charities that "enjoyed" it. The artists, of course, did not enjoy the fruits of the auction, as most of them--with the notable exception of Picasso--went unrecognized in their lifetimes.

William Blake, widely considered England's greatest visual artist, lived and died in penury, peddling watercolors for the price of a potpie. His hand-colored, 1795 monotype, "The Good and Evil Angels Struggling for Possession of a Child" (at right, top), set off a bidding war and brought a record US$3.9 million for a work by the admirer of Michelangelo and Rafael. The imaginative genius behind "Songs of Innocence and Experience" and "The Ghost of a Flea" could have used the pub credit.

Blake has experienced a revival of sorts, with the Tate Gallery in his native London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York putting on an immensely popular retrospective of his work three years ago (in which the "The Good and Evil Angels ..." was exhibited). This has now spilled over into the open auction market. Even Sotheby's underestimated the appeal of the incomparable Blake, as they reckoned his watercolor--which features vibrant formal and conceptual contrasts, a common theme for the London master--would only sell for US$1 million.

Perhaps this reversal of fortune demonstrates the greatness of artists who truly were ahead of their time, commanding millions of dollars for pieces that were often made for art's sake. For instance, Blake--who was referred to by friends as "poor Blake"--would sell his works often to simply cover the cost of raw materials and to keep his modest studio running.

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Biographer Peter Ackroyd described one exchange between Blake and his wife: when Catherine brought up their financial problems, Blake replied, "Oh, damn the money." He later would boast, "I laugh at Fortune and go on."

Pity "poor Blake" couldn't have witnessed the world's rich and powerful fighting over one of his fine watercolors and gotten a small cut of the Sotheby's sale price himself, just enough to take the wife out for a decent meal.