Auctions

Three months after a Japanese insurance company paid $39.9 million for Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, the overheated art market shows few signs of cooling off. At Christie's London auction house last week, another Van Gogh work, The Bridge at Trinquetaille, was sold in just two tense minutes of bidding for $20.2 million, the second highest price paid for a painting at an auction. The 29-in. by 36-in. Bridge, painted in 1888 when Van Gogh lived in Arles, was sold by the family of New York Banker Siegfried Kramarsky, who bought the painting in 1932. The buyer: an anonymous European collector who bid by telephone.