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Jackson Pollock – Number 4, 1951 ($25-35 million).

A group of eight paintings by titans of the American Abstract Expressionist Movement will be offered by Sotheby’s in New York on November 13.  The sale of masterworks  by Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Joan Mitchell, Hans Hofmann and Adolph Gottlieb is expected to realize $80-100 million.  They are from the extensive collection of Sidney and Dorothy Kohl and were acquired predominantly in the early 1970’s.

The group is led by Number 4, 1951, a drip painting on canvas by Jackson Pollock ($25-35 million). Over the course of the last 20 years, only eight drip paintings on canvas by Pollock have appeared at auction. Executed near the beginning of 1951 it epitomizes the drama and dynamism of the 1950 masterpieces that had just been exhibited at Betty Parson’s Gallery in New York from November to December, many of which are now included in the nation’s leading museum collections.

To offer a group of true masterpieces that have remained together in the same private collection for four decades is an event nearly unheard of in the art market, Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s worldwide head of contemporary art commented.  The Kohls assembled their collection with great care and with the help of the late Jack Taylor, a gifted curator of the American Abstract Expressionist Movement. (Click on any image to enlarge).

Clyfford Still – 1948-H ($15-20 million).

Franz Kline – Shenandoah 1956 ($6.5-8.5 million).

Andy Warhol.

Art by Andy Warhol, much of it never before seen in public, is be offered by Christie’s in a series of phased sales over coming years.   The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Art has engaged Christie’s for sales of future work from its collection.  The Foundation, which has made nearly $250 million in grants to museums and non profit arts organizations worldwide since 1987, wants to expand its long term support of visual arts.  Christie’s will use multiple platforms, including single artist live auctions, private sales and continuing on-line auctions.  Meantime the Foundation plans to make additional gifts of significant works to museums.

Around 350 paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and printed graphic material by Andy Warhol will be offered at three  single-artist live auctions on November 12, 2012. Online auctions will begin in February 2013 with private sales on an ongoing basis. Christie’s will launch a special promotional website in October. It will offer a central resource for sale-related information throughout the years of the partnership.

The Warhol estate, run by the Foundation, holds an inventory of around 350 paintings and 1,000 prints, plus drawings and photographs.

Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael
Auxiliary cartoon for the Head of a Young Apostle  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £29.7 MILLION

ONE of the greatest drawings by Raphael remaining in private hands is to be sold at Sotheby’s in London in December. Raphael’s Head of an Apostle c1519-20 is one of three Renaissance masterworks from the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth to feature at Sotheby’s sale of Old Master Paintings and Drawings in London on December 5.

The drawing is a study for one of the key figures in The Transfiguration which hangs in the Vatican Museum in Rome. When Raphael died, his body was laid out in state in his studio, with the Transfiguration hanging at his head. Only two other Raphael drawings of this calibre have appeared at auction in the last 50 years – each of which set an all-time record for an Old Master Drawing when they were sold. This one is estimated at £10-15 million.

The manuscripts to be sold were made for two of the greatest libraries of the 15th century and are flawlessly preserved, with dazzling royal and ducal provenances. The first, the Mystere de la Vengeance (estimated at £4-6 million) was acquired by the 6th Duke of Devonshire at the celebrated Roxburghe sale of 1812, when it sold for £493.10s. – then the highest price ever paid for any illuminated manuscript. The second illuminated manuscript, estimated at £3-5 million, is an account of the fictional and swashbuckling Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East and was once among the most treasured works in the library of great Renaissance patron of the arts François I, king of France, 1515-47.

The Duke of Devonshire said the sale will benefit the long term future of Chatsworth and its collections.  (Click on any image to enlarge).

The Emperor Galba Enthroned
from the Mystere de la Vengeance
French Flanders (Hesdin), 1465 UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD.

The author’s discovery of the tomb of Sir Gillion and his two wives
from the Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East
Antwerp, 1464  UPDATE: THIS MADE £3.8 MILLION.