FRIDA KAHLO (1907-1954) – Portrait of Cristina, My Sister (1928)
This Frida Kahlo portrait is from the collection of Jerry Moss, the M and A&M Records. Thirteen works from his collection will be showcased in a single-owner section of Christie’s 20th Century evening sale in New York on November 9. Jerry Moss was a music industry giant who played a critical role in establishing careers of the biggest musical acts in history—Sting, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton, Cat Stevens, Carole King, and countless more. Moss’s art collection comprises a fantastic group of objects that span a range of genres, representing the European avant-garde, icons of Latin American art, and contemporary masters.
Highlights include: Friday Kahlo’s Portrait of Cristina, My Sister ($8 million – 12 million) and Tamara de Lempicka’s Fillette en rose ($7 million – 10 million) two deeply personal portraits by women of their immediate family members—the first, of the artist’s sister and the second of the artist’s daughter. The top lot of the group is Picasso’s Nu couché, estimated to achieve $10 million – 15 million. Subsequent property from the collection will be sold in the Marquee Week day sales and the Design sales in December. In total, the collection is estimated to realise in excess of $50 million, with partial proceeds to benefit The Music Center.
Bleu Royal, the largest internally flawless fancy vivid blue diamond ever seen at auction will come up at Christie’s in Geneva on November 7. Fancy vivid blue diamonds of over 10 carats are practically unheard of in the saleroom. Only three have come up in more than 250 years at Christie’s. This 17.61 carat pear shaped stone combines a rich colour and flawless purity. In the same collection for the past 50 years it remains among the rarest to have been unearthed. Prices for top quality coloured diamonds have increased exponentially in recent years. The estimate is $35 million – $50 million (€32.8 million – €46.8 million). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $43.8 million.
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) – Le bassin aux nymphéas CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2023
Le bassin aux nymphéas, one of Monet’s monumental canvases from the celebrated water lily series, will be a leading highlight at Christie’s 20th Century evening sale in New York on November 9. Modern and timeless, Le bassin aux nymphéas captures the dynamism and beauty of nature’s transience, exploring the ephemeral atmosphere, seasonal blooms, watery depths, and glimmering reflections of light of Monet’s famed lily pond in Giverny. This superb example has been held in the same family collection for over fifty years. It is estimated to realise over $65 million.
Monet’s paintings of the water lilies are now among the most highly coveted and celebrated Impressionist masterpieces of his oeuvre, with examples held in the most esteemed private and institutional collections around the world. Le bassin aux nymphéasdates from 1917-1919, an all-important period of experimentation in Monet’s practice during which he achieved a new painterly vision of the lily-pond, sparked by his desire to create mural size images of the motif rather than the smaller water landscapes he had been creating prior. These grand, monumental depictions were filled with gestural, vigorous bolts of color that coalesce to form the watery landscape, the vibrancy and gestural quality of the brushwork revealing the impressive energy that lay behind the artist’s paintings, even at this late stage of his career.
PAUL CEZANNE (1839–1906) – Fruits et pot de gingembre ($35 million – 55 million). CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2023
Three masterpiece paintings by Paul Cezanne will highlight Christie’s 20th Century evening sale In New York on November 9 during Fall Marquee Week. Fruits et pot de gingembre ($35 million – 55 million), Quatre pommes et un couteau ($7 million – 10 million) and La mer à L’Estaque ($3 million – 5 million) are from the collection of the Museum Langmatt in Baden, Switzerland, home to one of the most extraordinary collections of Impressionist art in Europe, assembled with care and passion in the early 20th century by famed collectors Sidney and Jenny Brown.
Bequeathed to the City of Baden, Switzerland in 1987, the villa Langmatt a historic family home built in 1900-01 was converted into a public museum and cultural institution which opened in 1990. The Museum has required increasing levels of care, to maintain its aging physical facilities, which has substantially depleted the resources of the Langmatt foundation. The Museum will receive substantial funds from the City of Baden and the Canton Aargau towards renovation and restoration and the foundation must raise CHF 40 million / circa US$45 million for its endowment fund, providing the necessary interest rates for the long-term future of the museum’s operation. The sale of these three Cezanne masterpieces will be offered in a unique sale format. They will be offered consecutively until the total amount bid achieves the fundraising target. The Museum has committed to sell only the lots required to achieve its goal. Once this 40M mark has been reached in the auction, any subsequent lot(s) in the trio will be withdrawn from sale and returned to public display in Switzerland.
Barbara Hepworth – Three Oblique Forms (Walk In) (1968). UPDATE: THIS MADE £5,830,000)
Barbara Hepworth’s Three Oblique Forms (Walk In) (1968) will lead Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art evening sale in London on October 18. Standing at almost three metres in height it is one of a rare and highly important group of monumental sculptures created by Barbara Hepworth in the 1960’s. They were intended to be set in open-air surroundings and make a new understanding of landscape. Three Oblique Forms (Walk In) is on view in the garden setting of St James’s Square, adjacent to Christie’s headquarters on London’s King Street, until October 18, a unique opportunity to enjoy the work in a public outdoor space accessible to all. The piece is estimated at £6,000,000-9,000,000.
Joan Miró (1893-1983) – Peinture (Femmes, lune, étoiles). UPDATE: THIS MADE €20,750,000
Peinture (Femmes, lune, etoiles), a museum quality Miro, will headline Christie’s Avant Garde sale in Paris on October 20. Painted in 1949 it has been displayed in the La Colombe d’Or at St. Paul de Vence since its acquisition from the nearby Galerie Maeght in 1950. Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Braque and Calder were among the artists invited to leave work in lieu of payment at this inn where the food is as legendary as the art. Peinture (Femmes, lune, etoiles) has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Maeght, The Fundacio Miro, the Grand Palais in Paris and the Fondation Pierre Gianadda. Founded in 1920 La Colombe d’Or is now run by the third generation of the Roux family. Paul Roux’s passion for painting was the starting point for what is one of the most prestigious 20th century art collections in the world. The sale of this work will help the family expand the collection further. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR €20,750,000
Paula Rego, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ (1995, estimate: £2,200,000-3,200,000). UPDATE: THIS MADE A WOLRD RECORD PRICE OF £3,065,000
Paula Rego’s 1995 work Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ (1940) will come to auction for the first time at Christie’s 20th / 21st Century evening sale in London on October 13. With an estimate of £2.2-3.2 million it is expected to set a new auction record for the artist. Executed upon two monumental panels this is the finest and most complex in this extraordinary series. Formerly part of the Saatchi Collection, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ was created for the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition ‘Spellbound: Art and Film’ in 1996 and has been prominently exhibited over the past three decades including at Tate Liverpool (1997); The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2007-08); Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (2018-19) and Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2022-23).
Handwritten manuscript working lyrics to We are the Champions. UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR £317,500
Freddie Mercury’s baby grand, the matched wedding rings of Bogie and Bacall, a first edition of The Great Gatsby from the collection of Charlie Watts and Sir Roger Moore’s Lamborghini skis are among an extraordinary collection of celebrity stuff soon to come up at blockbuster sales in London and Hollywood. Collectibles like these are big business. With fans everywhere and global auction access online the business is growing exponentially.
A c1905 Art Nouveau glass vase lamp from the collection of Freddie Mercury. UPDATE: THIS MADE £22,860
Right now every inch of Sotheby’s 16,000 gallery space at New Bond St. in London is given over to a free exhibition of the world of Freddie Mercury in advance of three auctions on September 6, 7 and 8. Online Mercury sales already underway will run to September 11, 12 and 13. On offer are costumes, hand written lyrics, drawings, furniture, decorative and fine art that were part of his life at his London home, Garden Lodge in Kensington.The centre piece of the exhibition is his treasured Yamaha G2 Baby Grand. More than a decade of hits, from Bohemian Rhapsody to Barcelona, were composed on this treasured piano. Always kept in pristine condition it is estimated at £2 million – £3 million. There are handwritten working lyrics for Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now and Somebody to Love, costumes relating to promotional videos including a two piece stage outfit comprising catsuit and bolero of ivory satin with winged wrists and lower legs inspired by the God Mercury.
Henri Matisse – Masque Blanc sur Fond Noir from the collection of Freddie Mercury. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £30,480
Freddie Mercury was a discriminating collector who loved going to auctions. In 1980 he acquired Garden Lodge, a Georgian style brick villa, and set about creating a home that was both grand and intimate, richly furnished and entirely of his own making. The auction will include art by Matisse, James Tissot, Picasso and Utagawa Hiroshige, Victorian paintings and works on paper, the finest examples of the glass makers art, exceptional fabrics and fine works collected on trips to Japan. All are on view at Sotheby’s in an exhibition that will close on September 5, the day that would have been Freddie Mercury’s 77th birthday.
The matching 14 carat gold wedding rings exchanged by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in May 1945 at Julien’s. UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR $190,500
Iconic objects from some of Hollywood’s greatest legends will come up at a sale by Turner Classic Movies and Julien’s Auctions on September 6, 7 and 8. There is everything from dresses worn by Princess Diana and Audrey Hepburn to a slave costume worn by Princess Leia in Star Wars, Captain Kirk’s Star Fleet command jacket and the 1945 wedding rings of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. James Bond, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Back to the Future and Batman will all feature in a sale celebrating 100 years of Warner Brothers.
A library of First Edition classics and landmarks from the world of jazz will come up at Christie’s sale of the collection of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts (1941-2021). The sale is led by a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby inscribed by the author to the original Gatsby of the story. There are iconic works of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle alongside the best of English and American literature of the 20th century. Charlie Watts: Gentleman, Collector, Rolling Stone will take place in London on September 28. An online sale will run from September 15-29. Meantime Bonhams will offer 180 lots from the personal collection of Bond actor and UNICEF ambassador Sir Roger Moore (1927-2017) in London on October 4. This marks the 50th anniversary year of his first appearance as 007. There is Bond memorabilia like dinner suits and jackets, collectibles like a Hollywood Walk of Fame plaque and personal items like silk ties and cravats along with a pair of his Lamborghini skis.
MICHAEL SWEERTS (BRUSSELS 1618-1664 GOA) – The Artist’s Studio with a Seamstress
This completely unpublished and unknown canvas by Michael Sweerts made a record £12,615,000 over a top estimate of £2-£3 million at Christie’s Old Master’s sale in London. The unpublished and previously unknown canvas has been recognised as a signal masterpiece of Michael Sweerts’s art and a highly important addition to the oeuvre of ‘one of the most creative, enigmatic and hauntingly memorable artists of the seventeenth century’ (P. C. Sutton, Michael Sweerts: 1618-1664, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 11). Painted in Rome, where Sweerts is documented living in the Via Margutta between 1646 and 1652, this is perhaps his greatest picture on the theme of the artist’s studio, borne out of his own deep interest in education and artistic instruction. Two of his best-known works, also from his Roman period, are on the same subject: the Artist’s Studio in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, datable to circa 1650 and In the Studio, in the Detroit Institute of Arts, dated 1652. The present picture may pre-date both works and was likely painted soon after Sweerts’ arrival in Rome.
The landmark re-discovery of the last known pair of portraits by Rembrandt in private hands, Portrait of Jan Willemsz. van der Pluym and Jaapgen Carels, sold for £11,235,000. A discovery of a pioneering early work by Fra Angelico The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist and the Magdalen at the Foot of the Cross made a new auction record for the artist of £5,001,000. Christie’s Classic Week Evening sales realised a combined total of £68,156,850 achieving sell-through rates of 80% by lot and 92% by value. A total of 36% of new registrants to these sales were millennials; the breakdown of buyers by region was:43% EMEA / 35% APAC / 22% Americas.
Canova’s bust of Helen of Troy at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE £3,549,000
FROM Helen of Troy and Aphrodite to Mozart and a suite of Louis XIV silver mounted furniture the London summer sales season will deliver some remarkable masterworks and classical pieces to the global market in the coming week. On the market for the first time ever is a Bust of Helen by Antonio Canova (1757-1822). Given by Canova to Robert, Viscount Castlereagh (later the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry) in recognition of his efforts to return works of art to Italy at the end of the Napoleonic Wars it will be a highlight at Christie’s Old Masters sale on July 6. Appreciation of Castlereagh, by Canova or anyone else, is out of the ordinary. The Marquess, who committed suicide in 1822, is not remembered kindly in Ireland as a result of the suppression of the 1798 Rebellion and the promotion of the Act of Union, or in England, where he supported repressive measures that linked him in public opinion to the Peterloo Massacre. Inspired by that massacre Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy begins: “I met murder on the way, he had a mask like Castlereagh…
A 2nd century AD Roman head of the Capitoline Aphrodite on Italian polychrome 17th century stone draped shoulders at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £889,000
A bust of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love at Sotheby’s sale of Master Sculpture from Four Millennia on July 4 is unusual in that the head, neck and chest are all original. It was made in the Roman Empire about the 2nd century AD. The bust rests on Italian polychrome stone draped shoulders which date to the 17th century. Lifesize Roman representations of Aphrodite carved out of dark stone are extremely rare. The only other known example is at the Vatican.
A letter in German signed by Mozart’s at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
A dramatic 1782 letter by a 26 year old Mozart to his close friend Baroness von Waldstatten declares that he will need to get married within two days to save his future wife the scandal of being dragged out of his house by the police. Constanze was known to be cohabiting under the same roof in Vienna as Mozart. This prompted her mother Cacila Weber to send in the police to reclaim her daughter and save her reputation. The only solution Mozart could come up with was to marry her the same day or the next and marry they did, on August 4, 1782. It comes up at Christie’s Exceptional Sale on Thursday. A c1670 suite of Louis XIV furniture comprising a table and a pair of torcheres at Sotheby’s Treasures sale next Wednesday is thought likely to be the only surviving examples of the silver furnishings produced in the second half of the 17th century by the silversmiths of the Louvre and Gobelins workshops. The ensemble displayed in the King’s Grand Appartement at Versaille comprised 20 tons of solid silver. In 1689-90 Louis XIV decreed all silver should be sent to the Royal Mint to fund France’s fight in the Nine Years War. Nearly all but the most modest items or those that had already left France were melted down.
Alabaster portrait of Charles V at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
A carved alabaster portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), the most famous and celebrated Hapsburg ruler of Europe, demonstrates idiosyncrasies like the huge Hapsburg underbite. Lifetime portraits of Charles V in private hands are rare, most exist in museums. The sales next week will offer a trove of numerous museum quality works from paintings and drawings by Old Masters to furniture, decorative objects, books, manuscripts and letters.
