Christie’s announces more masterpieces from the Paul Allen Collection

Christie’s has announced more highlights from the Paul Allen Collection, which on 9 and 10 November 2022 could become the first art collection to exceed $1 billion.

By G. Fernández · theartwolf.com · Image: Georges Seurat: “Les Poseuses, Ensemble”, 1888

To the already announced “La montagne Sainte-Victoire” by Paul Cézanne, which Christie’s expects to exceed $100 million, a second post-impressionist masterpiece shares the same pre-sale estimate. “Les Poseuses, Ensemble” is the smaller (considerably smaller) version of Georges Seurat‘s famous work held at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Measuring just 39.3 x 50 cm, the painting Christie’s is bringing to auction is set to break the current auction record for a work by Seurat, set in 1999 by “Paysage, l’Ile de la Grande Jatte“. And most recently, in 2018, “La rade de Grandcamp” was auctioned for $34.1 million at Christie’s.

Seurat is, of course, one of the great innovators of modern art, “the son of nineteenth-century positivism, with the ambition to extend scientific methods to all areas of human activity (…) and of course to the visual arts” (Manuel López Blázquez: “Seurat”, 1995). And, just as importantly for the art market, his really important works very rarely appear on the market. Nevertheless, the “in excess of $100 million” is certainly an ambitious estimate, which will serve as a measure of the strength of the art market.

More post-impressionism: “Maternité II” is an important painting by Paul Gauguin, and those are big words. It has also passed through some of the most important modern art collections of recent decades, including those of David Rockefeller, Barbara Piasecka Johnson and, of course, Paul Allen. The last time the painting came up for auction, in 2004, it fetched $39.2 million, below its estimate of $40-50 million. Painted in 1888, Vincent van Gogh‘s “Verger avec cyprès” is a true beauty, arguably the most attractive of all Van Gogh’s landscapes to come on the market since “Paysage sous un ciel mouvementé” (1889) was auctioned for $54 million in 2015.

Speaking of beauty: “Birch Forest” has everything you could ask of a great landscape by Gustav Klimt. The painting, of almost mystical beauty, was one of a group of four Klimt works from the collection of Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer that were auctioned by Christie’s in 2006. The painting then fetched $40.3 million, a price eclipsed at the time by the $87.9 million achieved by the second version of the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

And since no collection with a special interest in landscape is complete without a work by J.M.W. Turner, the Paul Allen collection includes “Depositing of John Bellini’s Three Pictures in La Chiesa Redentore, Venice“, the most important of Turner’s Venetian views to come on the market since “Giudecca, La Donna Della Salute and San Giorgio” sold for almost $36 million in 2006. Beyond the landscapes, there is a good chance that “Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau)” will break the record price for a painting by Lucian Freud, although the work lacks the stark rage of works such as “Benefits Supervisor Resting” or “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping“, in my opinion more remarkable works than the one Christie’s will auction in November.