The gap between the U.S and Europe regarding art sales activities has been widening during the fall of 1999 with record prices registered in New York in the field of modern and contemporary paintings. For example Amedeo Modigliani's painting «La Belle Romaine» fetched US $ 6,56 million in November 1987 during the sale of the collection of Georges Renand in Paris.
French auctioneers then thought they were about to gain ground over Anglo-Saxon auction houses but twelve years later the same painting fetched US $ 16,7 million at Sotheby's in New York a price which stunned the Parisian art market.