Auctions

Sotheby's Reveals Monet, Picasso & van Gogh for London

Three works added to the London sales on March 2nd are estimated at $43 million

Sotheby’s has unveiled another Claude Monet work for the March 2nd sale in London. The late waterlilies work from 1914-1917 was purchased by Sotheby’s former owner Alfred Taubman in 1978 before he owned the auction house. It was exhibited in Japan in 1995 and was held most recently by two Japanese collections, the Fukuoka Broadcasting Corporation and a private collection. The highly abstract work is offered with a £15 million estimate ($20.3 million).

The work joins five other Monets also included in the sale from another collection. Those works are expected to sell for at least $40 million in the same London sale.

Also announced in Hong Kong along with the Monet Nymphéas was a 1938 black-and-white painting by Pablo Picasso called Buste de femme accoudée that depicts both Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar simultaneously. The painting has never been sold publicly before having once been included in Picasso’s estate. The work carries a £10 million estimate ($13.6 million).

 

Finally, the auction house also announced a work by Vincent van Gogh painted in 1888, the month after Van Gogh arrived in Arles. Estimated at £7 million ($9.49 million), Eglogue en Provence - un couple d'amoureux depicts two lovers walking along the bank of a river. Eglogue is french for the eclogue, a type of pastoral poem associated with Virgil. In this context, it refers to van Gogh's fascination with finding a rural utopia in the South of France and painting it into existence. 

This sale will mark the fourth time the painting has been sold at Sotheby's. It was first auctioned in 1986 in London for $410,000. Again in London, in 2001 it sold for $4.05 million. In 2013, it sold in New York for $7.1 million. 

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