Picasso and Monet lead Sotheby’s modern art auction

Sotheby’s modern art auction on 17 May 2022 fetched a total of $423 million, led by works by Picasso, Monet and Cézanne.

By G. Fernandez – theartwolf.com ·· Image: Pablo Picasso, Femme nue couchée, 1932. Image via sothebys.com

Following the sale of the second part of the Macklowe collection for a total of $246 million, Sotheby’s presented its star auction of the season. The total achieved ($423 million) is objectively a good result, although it pales in comparison to -for example- the $831 million achieved last week at Christie’s for the sale of the Anne H. Bass Collection.

The two star lots of the sale lived up to its expectations. “Femme nue couchée” (1932) -a painting in which Pablo Picasso depicts Marie-Thérèse Walter as a strangely sensual sea creature, a sort of surrealist mermaid- had a pre-sale estimate of over $60 million, and sold for $67.5 million. “Femme nue couchée” is an almost monochromatic work, perhaps too simple in composition for its almost monumental scale. But it is, for example, rather better than the very schematic “La Dormeuse“, auctioned four years ago at Phillips for nearly £42 million (more than double its pre-sale estimate).

The second big star of the auction was “Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute” (1908). The painting is one of six views of the Grand Canal and the Church of Santa Maria della Salute painted by Claude Monet in 1908, and one of three that include the steps of the Palazzi Barbaro, from where Monet painted all six views. Like J.M.W. Turner almost a century earlier, Monet seems more interested in the almost ethereal quality of the water and the atmosphere than in the spectacular baroque architecture of the church of Santa Maria della Salute. In the words of Karin Sagner-Düchting, “The Venetian palaces are Monet’s last architectural motifs; but here, too, architectural forms are transformed into natural phenomena, and it was above all the magical aspect of the Venetian atmosphere that, like Turner before him, fascinated Monet” (Karin Sagner-Düchting, “Monet”, 1990). The painting fetched $56.6 million, slightly above its pre-sale estimate of around $50 million. Another Monet, “Les Arceaux de roses, Giverny” sold for $23.3 million, in line with the $19.4 million the painting had fetched when it was auctioned in 2017 (Sotheby’s).

Image: Claude Monet, “Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute” (1908). Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 92.5 cm.

“Clairière” (The Glade), painted by Paul Cézanne around 1895, exceeded its pre-sale expectations, selling for $41.7 million. Sotheby’s explained in the catalogue that “by the time he painted the present work, Cézanne had reduced his palette to a combination of green, blue and ochre tones. This coloration, combined with a broadened brushstroke, allowed Cézanne to achieve an increasing level of abstraction in his landscapes, as is found in the present picture and in the views of Mont Sainte-Victoire executed during his last years.“

Among the auction’s positive surprises, “Leaves in Weehawken“, an abstraction painted by Willem De Kooning in 1958, fetched $10 million, twice its most optimistic pre-sale estimate. Leonora Carrington’s “The Garden of Paracelsus” sold for $3,25 million, a new record for the artist. Among the few disappointments, Philip Guston‘s “Nile” sold for $18 million, below its most conservative pre-sale estimate. “Le Jardin fleuriste, Yerres,” a beautiful Impressionist composition painted by Camille Pissarro in 1877, failed to sell despite its very reasonable pre-sale estimate of $3-5 million.