Work from three major private collections on sale at Christie’s New York.
Property from the estate of Canadian-American businessman and philanthropist Edgar M. Bronfman, who died last year, will feature in Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on May 6.
The New York sale will feature 54 works of every media by the most revered artists of the 20th century. The best Impressionist works by Monet and Renoir to come to market in many years from the Estate of Huguette Clark are coupled with distinguished examples by Degas from the Estate of Bronfman. Important Modern works by Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque and Dalí from the collection of Viktor and Marianne Langen pair with an orientalist van Dongen and an arcadian Picasso, also from the Bronfman estate. The evening sale is expected to achieve in excess of $245 million.
Brooke Lampley, head of Impressionist & Modern Art, said: “Christie’s is excited to offer our strongest May evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art since the record breaking sale of the Brody collection in May 2010. Our two top lots – Huguette Clark’s arresting Monet Nymphéas of 1907 and Picasso’s regal portrait of Dora Maar of 1942 – delineate the radical aesthetic developments in avant-garde painting in the first half of the 20th century, while also showcasing the collecting eye of both Americans and Europeans of the past century to present day. The Bronfman Collection enhances this story, itself a perfect capsule view of American art collecting in the past 50 years.”
Andreas Rumbler, deputy chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, added: “The selection of works from the Viktor and Marianne Langen Collection encompasses seminal works by the Modern Masters. Amongst major oil paintings by Picasso and Kandinsky, two superb works on paper by Picasso and Leger, delicate and strong, lead the sale. In fact the Leger was already purchased some 60 years ago by the collector couple when it was shown in their home town Düsseldorf shortly after its execution.”
Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Femme nue couchée au collier