Last month, Sotheby’s shared the news that it would bring to market a group of masterpieces from the legendary Lewis Collection. Since then, some ten works – each one exceptional in its own right – have been revealed, including paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Gustave Caillebotte, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Chaïm Soutine.
This landmark offering is led by a sensuous nude by Amedeo Modigliani (estimated in excess of £45 million) which ranks among the most important examples of the artist’s work ever to come to market. Painted in 1917, Nu assis au collier belongs to a series of works now widely regarded as pivotal in the evolution of modern art, but considered so outrageous at the time the exhibition in which they featured was shut down by the police. Modigliani is one of a rare coterie of artists to have broken the $100 million threshold at auction, not just once but twice – each time for a work from this series, and each time in New York. Now, with this sale, the mantle passes to London, where this painting represents not only one of the highest value works of any kind ever offered in the city, but also the highest value work by Modigliani ever to be offered in Europe. In this ground-breaking painting, Modigliani reinvents the tradition of the nude – a tradition marked most notably by the work of Rubens, Velázquez, Titian and, not least, Manet’s Olympia – in a way so radical it shook the foundations of art history.
Some 80 years later, Lucian Freud took that reinvention one step further, breaking new ground with the four seminal portraits of ‘benefits supervisor’ Sue Tilley, described by art critic and historian Sebastian Smee as “among the most exciting and unprecedented paintings of the human figure in the history of art.” The final, and most ambitious of the works in that series – Sleeping by the Lion Carpet (est. £25-35m) – will also feature in the June sale.
A further star work in the collection, Edgar Degas’ Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans (est. £18-25m) marks another of these radical moments. While Modigliani’s 1917 exhibition was considered so scandalous the police were called in, this extraordinary sculpture by Degas – with its real hair, dressed in a tutu and real dancing shoes – was considered at the time so shockingly realistic it was vilified: “Can art descend any lower?” asked one critic, describing the dancer as full of ‘bestial effrontery’’, while others called her ‘hideously ugly’. Now considered one of the icons of modern art, Degas’ ‘little rat’ is – in spite of the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the medium – the only sculpture exhibited in his lifetime. Of the 27 casts produced of this work, the vast majority now reside in international museums. These iconic sculptures are even rarer on the market – aside from this, only four other example have ever appeared at auction.
A suite of seven works by Pablo Picasso, spanning eight full decades of the artist’s long and varied career. The group is led by a highly unusual and evocative portrait of Dora Maar, the vibrant, fiercely independent artist who first attracted his attention by playing ‘knife roulette’ between her splayed fingers on an adjacent table at Les Deux Magots, and who, in addition to becoming Picasso’s muse and lover, also became his indispensable intellectual and artistic sparring partner. Given both the provocative nature of their relationship and the tumultuous backdrop against which it unfolded (the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War), the vast majority of Picasso’s renditions of Dora Maar are angular and jagged in form. The work to be offered this June, unseen until now for over half a century, is a rare example of something quite different – a generous, sweepingly lyrical rendition of the Dora Maar with whom, in 1938 when this work was painted, Picasso was still entirely besotted.
Buste de femme (est. £12–18m) will be presented alongside Tête de femme (est. £2–3m), a monumental work on paper from 1921 depicting Picasso’s first wife Olga Khokhlova. Produced during the years following the First World War, the work hails from Picasso’s Neoclassical period, part of the broader cultural reckoning known as the Return to Order. Among other works by Picasso to be offered this June is one of the earliest fully realised portraits by the artist ever to come to market, painted when he was just seventeen and already displaying his abundant precocious talent.
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI Nu assis au collier 1917-18, oil on canvas Estimate: In excess of £45 million
One of the greatest works by Modigliani ever to appear on the market, Nu assis au collier belongs to a pivotal moment in the artist’s career: 1917, the year of his first and only lifetime solo exhibition at Berthe Weill’s gallery on the rue Taitbout in Paris – a shortlived but infamous presentation that scandalised Parisian society and was closed by police on its opening day. The legendary nudes in the show are the works for which the Italian artist is today best known. The two highest-achieving works by the artist at auction – both titled Nu couché – were painted in that same year (selling for $170.4 million and $157.2 million in 2015 and 2018, respectively), underscoring the exceptional importance of this moment within his oeuvre. Last offered at auction in 1995, and unseen in Europe since 1938, the work emerges from the long tradition of the nude in Western art, tracing a lineage from Titian’s Venus of Urbino to Manet’s Olympia. With this series, Modigliani firmly positioned himself within that canon, reimagining it for a modern audience.
Leopold Zborowski, Modigliani’s dealer, offered the artist a stipend of 15 francs a day in 1917 to paint a series of nudes. With this sum Modigliani created several of the most arresting paintings in the history of art, reimagining the nude for the Modern era, including Nu assis au collier. The artist’s models were paid five francs to pose in an apartment just above Zborowksi’s own at 3 rue Joseph Bara, tucked between the Cimetière du Montparnasse and the Jardin du Luxembourg.
Just as Manet had confounded contemporary audiences of the previous generation with his Olympia, Modigliani’s provocatively modern take on the timeless subject of the reclining female nude would have a profound impact on twentieth century art. Where Manet’s figure confronts the viewer directly, Modigliani’s model turns inward. Seated in a pose that knowingly echoes the Venus pudica of classical antiquity, and wearing a coral necklace reminiscent of those worn in the Italian Renaissance portraits that Modigliani so admired, Nu assis au collier is a timeless fusion of ancient tradition and Modernist innovation. The work combines the influence of Italian Renaissance and Mannerist painting, of African carvings and the earth-toned palette and geometric modelling of Cubism, to unique effect. With her elongated form and averted gaze, Modigliani’s anonymous sitter feels both classical and deeply personal and intimate – she lifts one hand to her necklace, while the other rests between her legs in a gesture that is at once protective and provocative. Ultimately, her nudity is self-assured and proud, not cloaked in myth or allegory.
Modigliani died in 1920 at just 35, from tubercular meningitis, followed by his pregnant partner Jeanne Hébuterne dying the next day. The tragedy of the artist’s life has become inseparable from the perception of his oeuvre, and the notoriety surrounding the enforced closure of the infamous 1917 exhibition played an important role in establishing the “myth of Modigliani.” The strength of reaction to his now-celebrated nudes was indicative of their central role in establishing him as one of the great voices in the history of twentieth century art.
Nu assis au collier has been exhibited in major exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. “‘Nu assis au collier’ is a cornerstone within Modigliani’s celebrated series of nudes, distinguished by its restraint and psychological depth and – quite frankly – by its audaciousness. As restrained as she seems on the surface, this ‘modern-day Olympia’ nonetheless had the power to upturn tradition, causing a sensation.
EDGAS DEGAS Petite danseuse de quatorze ans Conceived in wax circa 1879-81; cast in bronze from 1922 Estimate: £18–25 million
Although approximately 150 sculptures in varying states of repair were found in Degas’s studio after his death in 1917, only one sculpture had been exhibited during his lifetime – the Petite danseuse de quatorze ans. The artist’s most ambitious and important sculpture, the work depicts Marie van Goethem, one of the ballet students at the Paris Opéra, or ‘little rats’, as they were known. These young dancers were a constant source of fascination for Degas, who – in his renderings – evokes not only the time-honoured elegance of ballet dancers, but also the relentless work and physical strain that their work demanded. When the wax model for this piece was first seen in Paris in 1881 during the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition, audiences were shocked by its realism, and it was at once acclaimed for its modernity and chastised for its realism and perceived vulgarity.
Degas’ unconventional use of materials also caused a stir: using a wire armature for the body and hemp for the arms and hands, he dressed the figure in real silk, tulle and gauze. The wig, meanwhile, came from Madame Cusset, supplier of ‘hair for puppets and dolls’. Now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., a part of the Mellon collection, the wax model for this work was found in Degas’s studio following his death in 1917 and cast in bronze from 1922. The collection also includes La Loge, a pastel by Degas completed in 1880 that is distinct from any previous image of the theatre the artist had yet created (est. £3-4 million). Unveiled at the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition, the work can be seen as an entirely new kind of portrait, focused on a modern individual in her modern surroundings, and depicted in a resolutely modern way. The artist’s detached view of a solitary human figure, seen from a low vantage point, caught the eye of nineteenth-century critic Charles Ephrussi: “The impression is strange, but captured with great accuracy”.
PABLO PICASSO Buste de femme 1938, oil on paper laid down on canvas Estimate: £12–18 million
Not seen in public for over half a century, Buste de femme is among the finest of Picasso’s celebrated series of portraits of Dora Maar, his lover and artistic companion in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In contrast to Picasso’s later distortions of Dora’s features, the work ranks as one of the artist’s more reverent and affectionate portrayals of the woman whose startling beauty and fierce intelligence was to inspire the creation of some of the greatest portraits of the artist’s career. Picasso’s affair with Maar was a partnership of intellectual exchange and intense passion. Maar, a talented artist and photographer closely associated with the Surrealist movement, first met Picasso early in 1936 while he was still married to Olga Khokhlova and involved in an illicit affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter. Unlike MarieThérèse, whose golden beauty had dominated Picasso’s subject matter in the previous decade, Maar spoke Picasso’s native Spanish, and shared his intellectual and political concerns. She even assisted with the execution of the monumental Guernica. Throughout their time together, Picasso would depict her in a variety of ways, from the monstrous character of the weeping women series to the vibrant and dignified depictions such as Buste de femme.
The most symbolic element of the sitter’s wardrobe in this picture is the hat, Maar’s most famous accessory and signifier of her involvement in the Surrealist movement. In 1937 the critic Paul Éluard wrote about the symbolism of the hat, explaining its fetishistic importance within the Surrealist movement and shedding light on its role in Picasso’s paintings: “Among the objects tangled in the web of life, the female hat is one of those that require the most insight, the most audacity. A head must dare to wear a crown.”
RENÉ MAGRITTE La Belle promenade 1965, gouache on paper Estimate: £3–4 million
La Belle promenade features the instantly recognisable image of the bowler-hatted man – not only the most iconic motif in Magritte’s oeuvre, but arguably one of the defining images of twentieth century Western art. In his works from the 1960s, Magritte reduced the man to a silhouette; by this point in his career, the image had become widely recognisable and a recurring stand-in for the artist himself. Executed in gouache – a medium he often used to revisit and distill key motifs – the work was last exhibited more than half a century ago. Only three significant bowler-hatted images have come to auction in the last decade.
MAX BECKMANN Stillleben mit Grammophon und Schwertlilien (Still Life with Gramophone and Irises) 1924, oil on canvas Estimate: £3–4 million
Stillleben mit Grammophon und Schwertlilien is an exceptional painting from Max Beckmann’s formative years in Frankfurt in the 1920s when he was recuperating from the trauma he experienced during the First World War. Painted in 1924, it is the first in an important series of mysterious and complex allegorical still-life paintings that the artist was to make throughout his career. Depicting a sequence of objects arranged at convoluted angles and on the verge of collapse, the work expresses Beckmann’s anger and pessimism towards Germany’s impoverished state. The masked figure of the woman serves not only to disguise her identity (she may be his mistress or his wife), but also to signify – together with the mirror reflection – illusion and artifice. The collection includes Artisten, a further work by Beckmann, painted in 1948, in which an ageing clown and a young snake charmer serve as proxies for the artist and his wife navigating their American exile (est. £2-3 million). Formerly in the celebrated Thyssen-Bornemisza collection and exhibited in Beckmann: Exile Figures (2018), the work was first owned by the American collector Morton D. May, an early patron of the artist.
FRANCIS BACON Study for Portrait 1976, oil on canvas Estimate: £3–4 million
Executed in 1976, Study for Portrait was painted in the shadow of Francis Bacon’s partner George Dyer’s death in 1971. It belongs to a pivotal group of works shown at Galerie Claude Bernard in 1977 – widely considered the most important exhibition of the artist’s career. An exemplary “head,” the painting fuses the features of Bacon’s close circle – most notably Henrietta Moraes – into a single, unstable presence. Constructed from memory and photographic source rather than direct observation, the face feels at once specific and elusive. A stark black circle, likely traced from a paint lid in the artist’s studio, frames a miniature self-portrait, inserting Bacon into the composition.
PABLO PICASSO Tête de femme 1921, pastel on paper mounted on board Estimate: £2–3 million
The monumental Tête de femme is one of five portrait heads executed in 1921 that relate directly to one of Picasso’s most iconic Neoclassical paintings of the period, Trois femmes à la fontaine. In the early 1920s, in the wake of the First World War, the artist took the features of his wife, Olga Khokhlova, as his subject and inspiration and an embodiment of the Classical ideal. Always at the forefront – if not leading – the prevailing zeitgeist of any given period throughout his career, Picasso forged a uniquely modern take on Neoclassicism amid the broad cultural reckoning known as the rappel à l’ordre, or call to order. Picasso’s style and preoccupations often changed in response to the circumstances around him, most particularly, to the ravages of war-torn Europe – an artistic reckoning that would have chimed deeply with the Lewises. Tête de femme is one of just two pastel heads from this group of five to remain in private hands.
PABLO PICASSO Angel Fernández de Soto circa 1899, oil on canvas Estimate: £1.5–2 million
Picasso was just 17 years old when he painted this early masterpiece – among the earliest fully realised portraits by the artist to ever come to market. It is a rarity amongst the portraits of his peers, most of which were drawings on paper rather than oil paintings. The sitter is Àngel Fernández de Soto – nicknamed “Patas” by Picasso – a spice merchant’s clerk who picked up extra money as a theatre extra. Both men were part of the Els Quatre Gats circle, a Barcelona café that brought together Catalan artists, bohemians and young intellectuals. The brooding mood anticipates the Blue Period, still two years away, a transition that would be hastened by the suicide of Picasso’s closest friend in 1901. Soto sat for Picasso again at the height of that period, resulting in the 1903 painting Portrait of Àngel Fernández de Soto, also known as The Absinthe Drinker – the same face, now carrying a far heavier expression. Soto was killed in the Spanish Civil War in 1938.
HENRI MATISSE Lydia (Étude pour ‘Portrait au manteau bleu’) 1935, charcoal on paper Estimate: £1.5–2 million
The 1930s were pivotal years for Matisse, when he refined his focus on the human form. During this period, the artist’s drawings take on a new dimension as he pursued a synthesis between line and ‘colour’, producing works of striking sensuality and sculptural presence, saturating the paper with richly shaded charcoal, and creating deep, textural layers through repeated drawing, rubbing and erasure. Acquired by the Lewises some three decades ago, this drawing is a key preparatory study for the artist’s celebrated painting Portrait au manteau bleu (1935) depicting Lydia Delectorskaya, who in the 1930s became Matisse’s devoted muse, assistant and companion of many years. 1
