Sotheby's impressionist art sale fails to sparkle in New York , Yazzy's at williamverdult.com

A major sale of impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's in late on Wednesday fell far short of expectations, with works by several major artists failing to find buyers.

While the sale did see a record set for a sculpture by Pablo Picasso and top prices paid for works by Egon Schiele, a quarter of the works remained unsold and the total bids fell well short of pre-sale estimates.

One of the highlights of the sale, Vincent "The Fields (Wheat Fields)," painted just two weeks before the artist's suicide and considered to be possibly his last finished work, unexpectedly failed to find a buyer.

The vibrant and sprawling depiction of golden wheat fields under a heavily bruised sky carried an upper estimate of 35 million dollars but failed to attract a single bid over 25 million dollars.

Four works by Picasso similarly failed to meet their reserves as did works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro and Georges Braque.

Other highlights of the sale including works by Gauguin, Franz Marc and Lyonel Feininger meanwhile sold at or below their lower estimates.

Gauguin's "Te Poipoi" (The Morning), one of the French post-impressionist's exotic Tahitian paintings, was the top lot of the sale but sold for a disappointing 39.2 million dollars to Hong Kong tycoon Joseph Lau.

The painting had carried a pre-sale estimate of 40 to 60 million dollars and was expected to beat the record of 40.3 million dollars for a work by the artist set last year with the 1891 painting "Man with an Axe."

The art world is anxiously watching the fall season of impressionist, modern and contemporary sales in New York for signs of how well the sector is standing up to crunches in the US housing and credit markets.

David Norman, co-chairman of impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's, insisted that while the results were disappointing, the market remained fundamentally sound and blamed the poor sales on overly-optimistic estimates.

"I really think the art market, despite the results of the sales tonight, is strong with a tremendous capacity to absorb the works," he said.

"Our estimates by the time the sale arrived just didn't look appealing enough, I think. It made some bidders cautious."

"I don't really at all read this as any kind of depression in the market... I still have a very great deal of confidence in the market and in people's interest in the pictures," he said.

In total the sale brought in 269 million dollars, way below the pre-sale estimate of 355 to 494 million dollars.

Among the few successes of the night was Picasso's "Tete de Femme (Dora Maar)," which fetched 29.1 million dollars, setting a new record at auction for a sculpture by the artist.

"This is without doubt the most important Picasso sculpture we've ever seen on the market," the head of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art evening sales, Emmanuel DiDonna, said ahead of the sale.

On Tuesday, Christie's sale of impressionist and modern art set a new record for a Henri Matisse painting, when his "L'Odalisque, harmonie bleu" went to an unidentified buyer for 33.6 million dollars.

That sale, which included an unusually large number of lots, netted the second highest total ever for a fine art sale but there too works by Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir and Chagall failed to meet their reserves.

The fall season of sales continues through next week with post-war and contemporary works by Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons going under the hammer.