1.
SV & CU Degas' sculpture "Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" (3 shots)
0.24

2.
CU Van Gogh's "L'Hopital de St Paul a St Remy (3 shots)
0.40

3.
NATSOF BEGINS. SV Auctioneer takes final bid for same PAN TO painting being taken down
0.56

4.
GV Buyers in hall
1.01

5.
SV Auctioneer taking bids for Boudin's "Crinolines Sur La Plage", shown on stand. Final bid 160,000 dollars
1.41



Initials SGM/2050 SGM/0324



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: A world record was set in New York yesterday (Wednesday, May 5) for a one-night sale of Impressionist art at the Parke-Bernet Galleries. The collection, belonging to California industrialist Norton Simon, fetched nearly 6,640,000 dollars (about 2,250,000 pounds sterling) in words by Degas, Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Rodin, Boudin, Monet and 19 others painters and sculptors.

Individual world records were also broken - the main one, Degas' "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" (The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer) which fetched 380,000 dollars (165,000 sterling), the highest price ever paid for a sculpture. The second, Eugene Boudin's "Crinolines Sur La Plage" (Crinolines on the Beach) which was sold for 160,000 dollars (about 65,000 sterling), top price for this French painter's work. Both these works are shown in our film - along with Van Gogh's "L'Hopital de St. Paul a St Remy" (The Hospital of St Paul at St Remy), which at 1,200,000 dollars (500,000 sterling) was still 100,000 dollars (41,000 sterling) short of the world record paid in February 1970 for his "Le Cypres et l'Arbre en Fleur" (The Cyprus and the Tree in Bloom).

Mr. Simon - who was not at the auction - said that he was offering part of his 19th and 20th Century art collection for sale "to obtain a somewhat more even balance and reduce the size of my personal collection".