A small Tingatinga lion painting sets a record in Nairobi

A square painting set a world record for its maker in Nairobi on 28 October. It measures 58.5 by 58.5 centimetres. Edward Saidi Tingatinga made the lion and bird scene in 1971, in enamel on board. Its estimate was 1,200,000 to 1,600,000 Kenyan shillings. It sold for 7,631,000, more than four times the high estimate.

The sale ran at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi, with 68 lots. It was the second edition of Art Auction East Africa. South Africa's Strauss & Co ran it with the organisers.

Reading the price

Business Daily puts the hammer price (the last bid the auctioneer accepts) at 6.5 million shillings. With the buyer's premium (the fee added to the winning bid) and taxes, the winner pays 7.63 million. The paper says the hammer price alone was about four times the top estimate. That one lot made up 16.5% of the evening's hammer total.

The context

Tingatinga's career lasted only four years, from 1968 to 1972. He painted in bicycle enamel on ceiling board, out of need. Shops in Dar es Salaam sold his work cheaply, and expatriate collectors bought it. He later trained friends and family, and the style has become a large industry in Tanzania. Few originals reach the market, the lot page says.

The rest of the sale

The sale made 46,308,430 shillings in all, or US$356,219. Business Daily counts 61 of the 68 lots sold. All 10 Tanzanian lots found buyers, and so did all nine Sudanese lots. Kenyan artists sold 22 of 24 lots, for the biggest hammer total, 11.8 million shillings.

Salah Elmur, from Sudan, saw an untitled 2019 work sell after 24 bids, for 3,522,000 shillings. Peterson Kamwathi's 2004 work The Two Horse Race went to a telephone bidder after 31 bids. It made 2,113,200 shillings, against an estimate of 420,000 to 650,000.

Danda Jaroljmek runs Circle Art Agency and founded the sale. Jaroljmek said: "Tonight is proof when things are hard in the world, we need art".

My own budget for lion paintings would run out at the frame.

Our view

We think the headline price is only the start of the story. Hammer price, premium and tax each change the sum, so check which figure a report gives.