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Gerhard Richter (B. 1932)
Vierwaldstätter See (In the region of £10 million). Courtesy, Christie’s Images Ltd., 2015.  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £15,762,500

The February London art sale season is fast approaching and it is looking good.  At Christie’s the pre-sale low estimate for a sale of 64 lots at the Post War and Contemporary Art evening sale on February 11 is £95 million. This is the second highest total for any such sale ever in  Europe.  Gerhard Richter’s photo-painting Vierwaldstätter See (Lake Lucerne), 1969, will lead the sale.  It has been in the same private collection since 1973.

Following the world record price of $69.6 million achieved for Cy Twombly’s Untitled in November, the sale includes Untitled (New York City), 1970, a  large-scale work from the same series of ‘blackboard’ paintings. The record Post War and Contemporary Art Evening auction in Europe was held by Christie’s in June 2012, and realised £132 million against a low pre-sale estimate of £102 million. Last year’s equivalent February season at Christies broke the record for any Post War and Contemporary Art week in Europe when it realised £176 million, including the benchmark sale of Arte Povera and Post-War Italian art, Eyes Wide Open: an Italian Vision, which brought in £38 million.

Claude Monet – L’Embarcadere 1871. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £10,229,000

A Dutch landscape by Claude Monet comes up at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale in London on February 3. L’Embarcadere is appearing on the market for the first time in a quarter of a century, and it is estimated at £7.5-10 million. It was painted in Zaandam, Holland, where the artist lived with his family for four months over the summer of 1871. His use of colour and the areas of  lively brushwork represent his gradual development of ideas and attempts to evoke the atmosphere of a scene.

On June 2 he wrote to his friend Camille Pisarro saying:  “Zaandam is particularly remarkable and there is enough to paint there for a lifetime”. Monet produced 25 pictures that explored several areas surrounding Zaandam, focussing his attention on the  architectural motifs of the Dutch landscape, canals, mills and boats.

Francis Bacon, Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1977, oil on canvas  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £14.7 MILLION.

A rare Francis Bacon double self-portrait comes up at Sotheby’s  auction of Contemporary Art in London on February 10. Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1977  is estimated at £13-18 million. Bacon painted only three self-portraits in this format.

In the years that followed the tragic suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971, Bacon’s work became increasingly concerned with the dark psychological depths of his own psyche.  Painted in 1977 this is a profoundly intimate portrait, starkly evoking the artist’s inner turmoil at a moment when he was at the height of critical acclaim during his lifetime.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s Deputy Chairman, Europe, said: “Of all the subjects he depicted, it is the self-portraits – painted with an almost obsessive intensity – that bring us closest to the artist. It’s this extraordinary intimacy and power, together with their rarity, that make Bacon’s self-portraits so irresistible to collectors.”

UPDATE:  Two Studies for a self–portrait by Francis Bacon made £14.7 million.  The last time it was at auction was in London in 1993 when it sold for £353,500.