At Christie’s on March 25, Yu Zhiding’s “Happiness through Chan Practice: Portrait of Wang Shizhen,” a handscroll, realized $3,442,500, a new auction record for a classical Chinese painting sold in the United States. The sale, For the Enjoyment of Scholars: Selections from the Robert H. Blumenfield Collection, achieved $13,866,500 and was 71 percent sold by lot, 94 percent sold by value.

The single-owner sale of Chinese carvings and works of art included 158 objects, with rare and important examples from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries and presenting a comprehensive range of rhinoceros horn and ivory carvings, works of art, ceramics and paintings that were appreciated and treasured by China’s scholarly elite.

Overall, Christie’s reported that its Asia Week series totaled $60 million, the second highest total for the firm. A complete review will appear in a future issue. ‼i>WD