This week, all eyes will be on Sotheby’s as an extraordinary auction takes place in its London saleroom that presents masterpieces spanning over 500 years of art history. Rembrandt to Richter features over 70 works, with Sotheby’s reporting that this will be the first time in decades that many of these treasures have been on view.
The sale will offer the very best from Old Masters, Impressionist & Modern Art, Modern & Post-War British Art and contemporary art – travelling through the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age to the revolutionary birth of Modernism, Pop Art and Post-modern Abstraction. Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, Helena Newman, described it as a “sale without boundaries, for those collectors who look for the best of the best, regardless of where or when the artworks were made.”
Highlights of the Evening Sale taking place on 28 July include:
Rembrandt, Self-portrait of the artist, half-length, wearing a ruff and a black hat, 1632, oil on oak panel (est. £12-16 million / $15-20 million). Rembrandt’s self-portraits are amongst the most recognisable images in the entire canon of western art and, of the forty-one that survive, this 1632 self-portrait is one of only three remaining in private hands and the only one ever likely to come to market;
Henri Matisse, Danseuse assise dans un fauteuil, 1942, oil on canvas (est. £8- 12 million / $10-15 million). Unseen since 1949 and set to appear at auction for the first time, this beautiful work is a quintessential example of Matisse’s sensuous odalisques. It is amongst the artist’s final canvases before Matisse turned to his famous cut-outs;
Gerhard Richter, Wolken (Fenster), 1970, oil on canvas in four parts (est. £9-12 million). Richter’s celestial cloud photo painting from 1970, fittingly multipanelled in the format of an altarpiece, evokes the sublime skies for which Turner and Constable were so famed, whilst also harking back to the heavenly church frescoes of the Renaissance. But significantly, it is a truly contemporary reinvention, painted from a photograph;
Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait of John Edwards, 1986, oil on canvas (est. £12-18 million / $15-22.5 million). Appearing at auction for the first time, this portrait by Francis Bacon opens a window onto one of the most important and significant relationships of the artist’s life. The subject is John Edwards, a bar manager from the East End of London who became one of the artist’s closest and most trusted companions – and the sole heir to the artist’s estate when he died in 1992.
A walking tour of the show, presented by acclaimed art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, can be watched here and the auction catalogue can be viewed here.
The Evening Sale will take place at 6pm BST on 28 July 2020.
Image: Gerhard Richter, Wolken (Fenster), 1970, oil on canvas in four parts © Sotheby’s