Expensive Apples

Paris' elegant Galerie Charpentier in the Faubourg-St. Honore was jammed one day last week. The overflow crowd streamed through the doors and into the street, making the situation so trying that when Pianist Artur Rubinstein pushed his way to the fore, the management was reduced to making a pregnant woman (a non-buyer, no doubt) give up her seat to him. The crowd had come for the sale of the year--the 46 paintings from the collection of the late Margaret Thompson Biddle, who was the ex-wife of Anthony Drexel Biddle Jr. of Philadelphia.

When the auctioneer cried the last "Sold," the results were enough to make a collector see green. The 45 paintings brought in $874,000 (plus $147,000 in taxes), three times as much as the auctioneer had anticipated, and one of the canvases was sold for the highest known price ever paid for a modern painting. The painting: Gauguin's Still Life with Apples. (1901), a platter of succulent, Cezannesque green apples on an opulent green tablecloth. It went to Greek-American Shipping Executive Basil Peter Goulandris for $297,000 (plus 16.7% in taxes). Mrs. Biddle had bought the Gauguin in 1953 at Manhattan's Wildenstein Gallery for $80.000. "So what?" shrugged one French woman, about the price and profit. "Apples are expensive."

Apples were not the only expensive items in the sale. Among the other paintings that brought from 30% to 550% more than anticipated:

Monet's Antibes, $50,000

Renoir's Roses in a Vase, $29,700

Renoir's Nude Stretched Out on a Divan, $28,000

Renoir's Mosque at Algiers, $62,900

Vlaminck's Level Crossing, $5,700

Lorjou's Flower Vase on Red Background, $2,700

Van Dongen's Restaurant de la Paix, $3,400

Gauguin's Landscape with Rose Tree, Pont-Aven, $40,000

Gauguin's Still Life with Apples and Grapes, $101,400

In addition to such prices to the seller, buyers paid an extra 16.7% to 18.2% of the purchase prices to French tax authorities. Said a shaken Manhattan art dealer who retreated to New York right after the sale: "Absolute insanity!"

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