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It was the antics of the buyer with Paddle 960 that got people talking. The bidder was Shanghai-based Wang Wei, who has spent more than 1 billion yuan ($146 million) this year with her stock-investor husband, Liu Yiqian, on a buying spree of Asian paintings as they prepare to open a private museum in the Chinese city next year, said Zhao Xu, executive director of Poly International Auction.
On the 2009 China rich list run by Hurun Report, Liu ranks No 176 with a net worth of $740 million. Wang wouldn’t say how much she has spent on artworks this year.
At Monday’s sale of Asian artworks, Wang frequently waved her paddle to offer an additional HK$1 million in pursuit of the pieces she wanted, often obliterating her opponents. Several times, she just held up her paddle regardless of rival offers until she won the lot.
Not in the last five years has the Hong Kong art-auction scene produced buyers of such confidence. “I just bought those for fun,” Wang said during a break.
Slender, with straight shoulder- length hair, and sporting a leopard-print handbag and shoes, Wang spoke into her mobile phone in rapid Shanghai dialect. So overwhelming was Wang s buying power that some buyers in the auction room craned their necks to see if they were up against her before deciding if they would bid on an item. Christie’s wouldn’t say how many items she bought.
In October, Liu paid a record $11 million for a Qing Dynasty imperial throne with carved dragons at Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale. This month, Liu paid about 170 million yuan ($25 million) at Beijing s Poly auction for a Ming Dynasty scroll by Wu Bin, the most for a Chinese painting, said Poly’s Zhao. At this auction, Wang paid HK$7.2 million for a scarlet-and-pink acrylic-on-canvas by Chinese contemporary artist Liu Ye, titled ‘I Always Wanted to be a Sailor.’
Liu and Wang typify an emerging group of mainland Chinese art buyers that are paying top prices for antiques. Wu Qun, a Beijing-based buyer who paid HK$23 million in April for a Xuande era (1426-1435) blue-and-white stem bowl with Tibetan script at Sotheby s Hong Kong auction, predicts mainland buyers will start paying hundreds of millions of yuan for the best Chinese antiques in the coming years. American collectors remain the strongest buyers in this category of art.
Meanwhile, an early Ming Dynasty red-lacquer tray resembling one in Beijing s Palace Museum fetched HK$25.3 million ($3.3 million) at the auction. The 15 3/4-inch square tray, intricately carved to depict men astride horses arriving at a Chinese garden with pavilions and pine trees, sold in a packed room of at least 600 people after a three-minute tussle.
“This is a good auction with very respectable results, said Wu Qun, a Beijing-based buyer who paid HK$23 million in April for a Xuande era (1426-1435) blue-and-white stem bowl with Tibetan script at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction this year.
Mainland Chinese bidders were less conspicuous at the Christie’s sale than at Sotheby’s, with many top lots going to bidders speaking Cantonese or Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent, suggesting they are from Hong Kong or Taiwan.
