SOTHEBY’S IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART DAY SALE
TOTALS $53.3 MILLION IN NEW YORK

The Van Gogh Museum & The Drents Museum
Jointly Acquire a Rare Early Work by Vincent van Gogh:
Paysan brûlant de mauvaises herbes (Peasant Burning Weeds)
Sells for $3.1 Million

Strong Market for Claude Monet Continues:
An Early Depiction of Étretat on the Normandy Coast
Brings $3 Million
&
A Late Fragment of His Fabled Waterlilies in Giverny
Sells for $2.5 Million

Sotheby’s Has Sold 13 Works by Monet in 2019
For a Total of $228 Million

Top Prices for Latin American Art:
Wifredo Lam’s Femme avec un oiseau
Fetches $1.6 Million
* On Offer from the Collection of Mercedes Barcha Pardo and Gabriel García Márquez *

Pablo Picasso Ceramics & Works on Paper
From the Collection of Marina Picasso
Are 100% Sold | Total $2.4 Million

SOTHEBY’S NEW YORK SALES SERIES OF
IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART
TOTALS $262.3 MILLION

NEW YORK, 14 November 2019 – Scott Niichel, Head of Day Sales and Deputy Co-Head of Impressionist & Modern Art at Sotheby’s, New York, said: “The results from yesterday’s sale, our highest total since November 2015, were driven by private collectors and institutions worldwide, who sought top-quality works that were fresh to the market. We saw a continuation of several trends observed on Tuesday night, such as a robust appetite for works by Monet and Van Gogh and strength for classic Impressionist pictures overall. Among the works emerging from fantastic private collections, we were particularly honored to be entrusted again with works from the collection of Marina Picasso, which were 100% sold. Collectors aggressively competed for the opportunity to own these works on paper and unique ceramics, all featuring Picasso’s most celebrated styles, genres and subjects.”

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Drents Museum have jointly acquired Vincent van Gogh’s Paysan brûlant de mauvaises herbes (Peasant Burning Weeds) from 1883, which sold for $3.1 million (estimate $600/800,000). The work will be exhibited alternately at both museums, with its first appearance on public display at the Drents Museum.

A rare early work executed during the artist’s time spent in the Drenthe province of the Netherlands, the painting recalls the influence of the Dutch Old Masters, as well as Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet. This work has recently been restituted with Sotheby’s assistance to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish Dutch art dealer who fled the Netherlands when it was invaded during World War II, and his collection subsequently looted by the Nazis. Other works of art formerly from the collection are owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Following Tuesday night’s sale of Claude Monet’s luminous Charing Cross Bridge from 1903, yesterday’s saleroom saw continued enthusiasm for the iconic Impressionist’s work. A highlight of Everything You Can Imagine Is Real: Property from an Important Private European Collection, Monet’s Étretat, coucher de soleil sold for $3 million, besting its high estimate of $1.8 million. A display of ravishing colors, the present work is a fine example from Monet’s Étretat series, which he executed during his three month stay in 1883. The artist’s famous lily pond in his garden at Giverny provided the subject matter for most of his major later works, including Nymphéas, which tripled its high estimate to sell for $2.5 million. The present work is an exceptionally large example of a fragment, providing a close-up detail of the artist’s most iconic and celebrated Impressionist motifs. Sotheby’s has sold 13 artworks by Monet in 2019 for a total of $228 million.

Works by Latin American artists achieved a number of top prices in the auction, led by Wifredo Lam’s Femme avec un oiseau from 1949, which fetched $1.6 million (estimate $800,000/1.2 million). The work notably was offered from the collection of Mercedes Barcha Pardo and Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize-winning author and master of magical realism. A new world auction record was established for Francisco Toledo, whose 1973 work Meu Xubi sold for $1.04 million (estimate $700/900,000). The work characteristically probes at the intersection of humans and animals, referencing the Mesoamerican tradition of the Nagual as well as the work of Goya and Kafka. Leading the Surrealist works on offer in the Day Sale was Remedios Varo’s L’École buissonnière (Haciendo novillos) from 1962 – an essential example of the artist’s visual lexicon, which brought $1.5 million (estimate $800,000/1.2 million). Grounding the extraordinary into the ordinary, Varo invites viewers into a world within the context of daily experience, filling her paintings with self-referential characters who are abstracted, metaphoric and ironic.

46 works on offer from the personal collection of Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter, Marina were 100% sold, totaling $2.4 million (estimate $1.3/1.8 million). Titled ‘A Musical Feast,’ the selection of works on paper, sculpture and unique ceramics was themed around Picasso’s depictions of instruments, performers, dancers and musicians, bacchanalian figures, animals, banqueting and entertainment. The group was led by a notebook of the artist’s personal sketches from the late 1910’s, which sold for $362,500 – over 8x its high estimate. Executed circa 1915-16, Carnet No. 26 (Étude de violons et instruments de musique) marks an important stage in the artist’s development of Cubism, in which he experiments with complexities of representation and perspective.