DAVID HOCKNEY
An exquisite and intimate rendering of one of the figures closest to David Hockney during his time spent in Paris walking over the Pont des Arts to the Louvre Museum on a rainy afternoon, David Hockney’s Yves-Marie in the Rain from 1973 brilliantly captures the remarkable specificity and profound psychological depth that the artist brings to his very best portraits (estimate $8/12 million). Articulated with a clean, economical use of detail, Yves-Marie in the Rain exemplifies Hockney’s inimitable ability to suffuse his paintings with an intangible sense of atmospheric place, surpassing the formal qualities of the painting itself.

Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool from 1964 is the very first painting from David Hockney’s iconic corpus of pools (estimate $6/8 million). Featured in the artist’s best-known paintings, drawings, and photographs, the sun-dappled cerulean pool has become the defining motif of Hockney’s inimitable oeuvre. Upon Hockney’s return to England near Christmas in 1964 – shortly following his first visit to California –  he painted Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool from a drawing he had executed earlier that year, fixing upon the canvas the incandescent light and bold color of California with an almost religious reverence.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL
The autumn auction features two works by Kerry James Marshall. Executed in 2014, Marshall’s Vignette 19 belongs to the artist’s celebrated series of Vignette paintings he began in 2003 (estimate $6.5/7.5 million). A dream-like love saga, Vignette 19 explores and celebrates the exceptional romance of three black couples – demonstrating the glaring absence of black figures from the history of Western painting in the process. Marshall rewrites art history in the present work, inserting black figures into a lush scene reminiscent of early Romantic and classical Rococo painting.

An exceptional example of Marshall’s acclaimed series of Pin-Up portraits, Small Pin-Up (Lens Flare) from 2013 is a resounding testament to the poise and intellect of his celebrated oeuvre (estimate $2.5/3.5 million). The subject of the present work invokes the glossy curves of a magazine cover girl and, simultaneously, the refined elegance of a grand art historical portrait.

FRANCIS BACON’S POPE
Francis Bacon’s Pope will be offered on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum, sold to support the museum collection (estimate $6/8 million). Executed during a particularly turbulent and emotional moment of Bacon’s life, Pope offers a rare glimpse into the psychology of the artist and the influences behind the works he created during a passionate yet volatile love affair with Peter Lacy. In the mid-1950s, Lacy moved to Tangier, prompting Bacon to make frequent and extended trips to Morocco to spend time with his lover. Despite this, their romance ultimately devolved into violence, which characterized a period of great psychological angst for the artist.

While Bacon was particularly prolific during his stints in Morocco, he ultimately destroyed the majority of the paintings he created in Tangier – perhaps as a way to separate himself from the memory of his calamitous relationship with Lacy. The present Pope is one of only six Tangier Paintings that survive, five of which Bacon gifted to his friend Nicolas Brusilowski in 1959, hoping that he may be able to reuse the canvases. Brusilowski instead preserved these works, which later made their way into notable private collections worldwide. Brusilowski sold the present Pope to legendary Swiss dealer Jan Krugier, and the work was subsequently acquired from his Galerie Krugier et cie in Geneva by pioneering businesswoman and American collector Olga H. Knoepke in 1967. She gifted the work during her lifetime to the Brooklyn Museum in 1981, where it has resided until the present day. Separate release available

A RARE CAKE COUNTER BY WAYNE THIEBAUD

Emerging from a golden childhood memory, Wayne Thiebaud’s marvelously-colored desserts arranged in a classic diner or cafeteria-style display is a motif he famously devised in 1961 – and one he revisited over the course of nearly seven decades. These carefree objects and hallmarks of middle-class consumption evoke a sense of 1960s exuberance and prosperity. The Evening Auction will offer Thiebaud’s Encased Cakes (estimate $6/8 million) – his first cake counter to appear at auction since 1997. Measuring an impressive 72 inches tall, the work is also of exceptional scale within the artist’s oeuvre, and has remained in the same distinguished private collection since it was acquired directly from the artist in 2011, the year of its completion.

LEE KRASNER’S SUN WOMAN I
Sun Woman I from 1957 is one of the largest and most important paintings from Lee Krasner’s crucial Earth Green series (estimate $6/8 million). Executed at a critical intersection of the artist’s life, the series represents a literal and metaphorical rebirth: painted in the year following Pollock’s death in a car crash, the Earth Green works were the first works executed in Pollock’s studio in the barn beside the house in East Hampton. Suddenly given the opportunity to work on a grand scale, the works represent Krasner’s rebirth as an artist and her declaration of independence. Widely considered as the pivotal moment of her career, Sun Woman I can be read as a refutation of Pollock’s myth and the prevailing machismo of the age.

Hugely popular during Krasner’s own lifetime, the present work was included in the artist’s pivotal 1983-85 travelling retrospective and featured on the front cover of the catalogue her solo presentation at Robert Miller in 1982.