$30million for the ‘mad rantings’ of Picasso
London’s auction rooms are hosting previews of some spectacular works of art before they are sold in New York. From this Saturday until October 17, Sotheby’s is showing Warhol, Rothko, de Kooning, Giacometti and Twombly from the soughtafter £440 million Macklowe collection – the result of one of the costliest-ever divorce proceedings in America, between developer Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda. A Peter Doig canoe painting from another source is predicted to fetch a record $35m.
Christie’s has the $200-million Dallas-based Cox collection, with paintings by Cézanne, van Gogh and Caillebotte on view from October 18–21. Not yet announced will be one of Picasso’s late paintings of musketeers, created in the 1960s and written off by critics as the mad rantings of an old man. By the late 1980s, though, such late works were being praised by fashionable young figurative painters like Georg Baselitz. Now, they are worth millions; and this example is tipped to set a record for a musketeer painting in excess of $30m. In the same auction and also yet to be announced is a charming Monet of the artist’s family in a garden with a $12m estimate.
From October 17, Christie’s Modern British art sale will also be on view. This includes two bronzes by Elisabeth Frink that were formerly owned by Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne. The couple met while Douglas was playing van Gogh in the 1956 film Lust for Life and Anne was working in a Paris gallery. They went on to buy works by Picasso, Chagall and Mondrian, though later sold their collection of modern art, having developed an interest in the works of living artists. One of these was Frink, whom they bought from directly. A 40-inch bronze dog is now estimated at £100,000 to £150,000, and an 81-inch bronze horse is £300,000 to £500,000. Douglas died in 2020, and his wife earlier this year.
Meanwhile, The Palace of Versailles is to announce an acquisition made at the Maastricht fair, TEFAF, in March 2020 from the London dealer Stuart Lockhead. The extremely rare 18th-century marble bust of Louis XIV’S surgeon, Georges Mareschal, by Francois Girardon was priced at €2.64 million (£2.25 million). The sculpture stayed with Mareschal’s descendants until the 1980s, when it went to America and then, 30 years later, to Lockhead.