Le Temps Retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection 22 October at Sotheby’s Paris

 Le Temps Retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection is one of the most valuable private collections of Impressionist and Modern art ever to come to auction in France. Comprising masterpieces hidden from public view for decades, and in many cases since their execution, the collection features works by Claude Monet, Gustave Moreau, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Camille Claudel and many more. Estimated in excess of €40 million / $45 million, the collection brings together an exceptional group of works assembled over more than four decades by Jeanne Schlumberger (1889-1983), whose pioneering eye and prescient vision shaped one of the most remarkable collections of its kind. 

Leading the sale is

Claude Monet’s monumental Iris (1924-25), an extraordinary masterpiece from the artist's final years at Giverny. Estimated at €22–30 million, the painting is the most important work from this celebrated series ever to appear on the market and the largest example remaining in private hands. Among the most ambitious and innovative paintings of Monet’s late career, Iris has an equally extraordinary history, having been acquired by visionary gallerist Katia Granoff (1895-1989), with the prescient backing of Jeanne Schlumberger. Together, they understood that Monet’s late works were not the final chapters of Impressionism, but the opening pages of Modernism and Abstraction. Never before exhibited publicly, and known only from black and white photographs, Iris is unveiled for the first time alongside other highlights from the collection, before travelling to Hong Kong and New York ahead of its auction in Paris on 22 October during Art Basel. 

It is joined by a second work by Monet, Saule pleureur or L'Arbre de feu (est. €9-12 million), one of the most celebrated works from the artist’s series of paintings depicting weeping willows in his Giverny garden. Both paintings descended directly from Claude Monet to his son Michel Monet before passing into the hands of Katia Granoff – whose pioneering advocacy helped shape the collection – and ultimately entering the Schlumberger collection. Their appearance on the market coincides with the centenary year of Monet’s death, as museums both in France and worldwide pay homage to the artist.

 Yet, Le Temps Retrouvé extends far beyond Monet, tracing a broader history of artistic innovation through exceptional works by Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Moreau, Gustave Courbet, Camille Claudel, Eugène Delacroix and Chaïm Soutine. From Cézanne’s rare mural originating from the legendary Jas de Bouffan, the artist’s familial home and creative laboratory, to Bonnard’s luminous evocations of memory and nature, and Moreau’s sumptuous Symbolist vision, the collection traces a lineage of artistic innovation that shaped the course of twentiethcentury painting, each work representing a pivotal moment in the emergence of modern art. 

“Great collections are built on taste. The greatest, perhaps, are built on conviction. The story of the Schlumberger Collection is, ultimately, one of seeing what others could not. Jeanne Schlumberger and Katia Granoff recognised the radical brilliance of these works at a time when many still overlooked them. One collected, the other championed, both trusted their instincts when the world seemed to have already made up its mind. Today, as this Impressionist trove makes its market debut, it does so as the legacy of two women who changed the destiny of the artists they believed in. Just as Jeanne Schlumberger and Katia Granoff helped rewrite the history of Impressionism, Le Temps Retrouvé will mark a defining chapter for Sotheby’s Paris, for the art market, and for a new generation of collectors.” Thomas Bompard, Co-Head of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s France

At the heart of the collection lies the story of two visionary women whose conviction helped shape the legacy of some of the greatest artists of the modern era: Jeanne Schlumberger and Katia Granoff. 

The collection once adorned the walls of the Schlumberger family's hôtel particulier on rue Las-Cases in Paris, home to Jeanne and Marcel Schlumberger. While the Schlumberger name became synonymous with one of the twentiethcentury’s great industrial dynasties, it was Jeanne who was the true architect of its artistic legacy. 

Beginning in the 1950s, and carrying on for over four decades, Jeanne worked hand in glove with Katia Granoff, building a collection of exceptional breadth and quality. Their relationship, borne out of a shared connection and mutual trust, would prove transformative for both. More than a collector and a dealer, they became partners in a shared vision. Jeanne offered support, confidence and patronage; Katia offered access, expertise and a rare instinctfor discovering greatness before the rest of the world recognised it. Artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Chaïm Soutine, Georges Rouault, Othon Friesz and Pierre Laprade all found in the Parisian dealer an unwavering advocate. 

In 1958, Jeanne appears to have played a discreet but important role in financing Granoff's acquisition of Michel Monet's studio holdings, enabling Granoff to secure one of the most extraordinary groups of Monet masterpieces ever to come onto the market. The acquisition was daring, ambitious and, in many respects, visionary. At the time when these late works attracted little interest in France, Granoff recognised their radical modernity, helping place major paintings in leading American museums – such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago – and private collections, ultimately reshaping appreciation of Monet’s final years. Both women understood that these late works were not the closing chapter of Impressionism, but a bridge to Modernism, anticipating many of the artistic innovations that would come to define the second half of the twentieth century, from Mark Rothko to Joan Mitchell. 

Jeanne Schlumberger was among the very first private collectors to share that conviction. Through her close friendship with Granoff, she acquired exceptional works from this remarkable group long before they achieved their canonical status, and treasured them for decades to come. Before the Musée Marmottan Monet became the sole repository of the artist’s estate in 1966, only three collections in Paris were devoted to the preservation and promotion of Monet’s visionary late works: the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Galerie Katia Granoff and the Schlumberger Collection. 

Whether acting as patron, partner or trusted confidante, Jeanne Schlumberger’s support helped make possible one of the most consequential rediscoveries in the history of Impressionism while ensuring that some of its finest works found a home within the Schlumberger collection.

INSIDE THE COLLECTION 

CLAUDE MONET Iris 1924-25 Estimate: €22,000,0000-30,000,000 

The undisputed masterpiece of the collection, Claude Monet’s Iris ranks among the most important late works by the artist - and the largest example from this celebrated series - remaining in private hands. Painted in 1924-25, during the final years of Monet’s life at Giverny, it belongs to an exceptionally rare group of twenty paintings from the series executed between 1914 and 1925, and represents one of the most ambitious achievements of his career.

Measuring an extraordinary 160 by 180 centimetres, Iris is the only work of this scale from Monet’s final decade to remain outside a museum collection. Its only true counterpart is today housed at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris.

Never exhibited publicly before and known only from a black and white photograph, the work comes to auction with an estimate of €22-30 million - the highest estimate ever assigned to a painting at auction in France. 

By the mid-1920s, Monet had moved far beyond the concerns of Impressionism. At Giverny, he transformed his celebrated garden into what Marcel Proust described as a “garden of hues and colours”. It was here that he pursued what he described as “the illusion of an endless whole” – a pictorial world no longer bound by conventional perspective or fixed horizons, but one capable of enveloping the viewer in a continuous field of light, colour and sensation. 

Originating in Japan, irises were one of Monet’s favourite flowers and a familiar motif from the Japanese prints he owned by artists such as Hokusai. Important paintings from this series, which also passed through the hands of Katia Granoff, are now housed in leading museum collections around the world, including The National Gallery in London and the Art Institute of Chicago. 

“Remarkably well preserved, unlined and unvarnished, Iris and Saule pleureur offer  an exceptional insight into Monet's ultimate artistic project.” Marianne Mathieu, Historian of Impressionism, Director of the Nymphéas project (WPI) and former Scientific Director of the Musée Marmottan-Monet

CLAUDE MONET Saule pleureur or L'Arbre de feu 1918-19 Estimate: €9,000,000-12,000,000 

Painted in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Saule pleureur hails from Claude Monet’s late career. Executed between 1918 and 1919, it belongs to the celebrated series of just ten paintings depicting the majestic weeping willow that stood beside the artist’s lily pond at Giverny. Today, works from this groundbreaking group reside in some of the world’s most important museum collections, including the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris and the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas. 

The composition is strikingly modern: the weeping willow fills the surface, the sky disappears, and the viewer is confronted with a dense, immersive curtain of colour and brushwork. Bathed in vibrant greens, blazing reds, purples and golds, the tree pulses with life and movement and becomes almost sculptural, the surface rich, layered and luminous. Katia Granoff would later describe these paintings as Monet’s arbres de feu, “trees of fire,” a fitting expression for works that seem charged with an almost elemental energy. In creating this work, Monet applied colour directly onto the canvas from paint tubes, achieving a gestural force and chromatic audacity which would resonate profoundly with the Abstract Expressionists. Saule pleureur, together with two further works by Monet - 

La Maison à Travers les Roses (circa 1925-26, est. €2-3 million) 

and La Seine à Vernon, Arbres (1894, est. €1.2-1.8 million) - share the same exceptional provenance: all have remained out of public view since their creation and each passed directly from Claude Monet to his son, Michel, and thence into the Schlumberger Collection via Katia Granoff, where they were treasured for more than half a century.

PAUL CÉZANNE La Ferme 1862-64 Estimate: €600,000-800,000

It was at Jas de Bouffan, Cézanne’s beloved family home in Provence, that the young artist learned to observe, experiment, invent, and ultimately challenge pictorial conventions. Between 1862 and 1864 he painted the ground floor walls with a large mural - Paysage romantique aux pêcheurs - depicting bucolic scenes inspired by the great masters of the past. Following the dispersal of the estate in 1899, the mural was detached, transferred to canvas, and ultimately divided into eight fragments, preserving rare remnants of one of Cézanne's earliest and most ambitious artistic projects. Three of these compositions - acquired by Jeanne Schlumberger through Katia Granoff - will be offered in this sale: La Ferme (est. €600,000-800,000), Arbres au Bord de la Rivière (est. €400,000-600,000), and Ciel Entre les Arbres (est. €400,000-600,000). Measuring approximately 149 x 180 cm, La Ferme is the largest work by the artist ever offered at auction. Now designated Trésors nationaux, the paintings are recognised as works of major importance to France's cultural heritage.

GUSTAVE MOREAU Rêve d’Orient 1881 Estimate: €600,000-800,000 

Acquired by Jeanne Schlumberger in 1971, Gustave Moreau’s Rêve d’Orient is one of the greatest works by the artist ever to come to auction. Hailing from Moreau’s most celebrated and inventive period, it displays all the characteristics that define his finest compositions - luminous colour, exquisite ornament and a poetic vision uniquely his own. 

Rêve d’Orient draws inspiration from the myths, literature and visual culture of the Middle East, Persia and India. The artist creates an invented universe governed by beauty, reverie and desire, in which every passage of translucent watercolor is enriched with delicate touches of gouache, producing a surface of astonishing richness that rivals the brilliance of enamel, miniature painting or precious gemstones. The watercolor also reveals Moreau’s mastery of a medium he elevated to unprecedented heights. 

By the early 1880s, Moreau had become one of the most enigmatic and admired figures in European art. Celebrated by a devoted circle of collectors and writers, yet regarded by many contemporaries as a visionary apart from any established school, he occupied a singular place within the cultural imagination of fin-de-siècle Paris.

CAMILLE CLAUDEL La Valse, petit modèle Conceived in 1895 and cast in 1905 by Eugène Blot, casting n. 1/4 Estimate: €400,000-600,000

La Valse (“The Waltz”) is undoubtedly Camille Claudel’s most famous work and one of her most erotic sculptures. Conceived in the closing years of the nineteenth century, it coincides with a period of intense artistic production and her passionate relationship with Auguste Rodin. During this period, Claudel made several versions of the subject. In her first version, she presented her dancers nude; the Administration des Beaux-Arts was so shocked by her audacious composition, they demanded she dress her figures, which Claudel partially accomplished with the sweeping fabric that appears to flow out of the female figure's back. 

The Eugène Blot casting holds a particularly important place in Claudel’s oeuvre. Claudel met Blot through the art critic and friend of Rodin, Gustave Geoffroy, and it was Blot who, from 1905 onward, became one of the few dealers willing to champion her work at a moment when she had broken definitively with Rodin's circle and struggled for recognition in her own right.

With The Waltz, Claudel gained the recognition of many of her contemporaries; as Léon Daudet wrote: “Only a great and broad mind could have conceived this materialisation of the invisible.

PIERRE BONNARD La Cueillette des Prunes Circa 1899 Estimate: €600,000-800,000

La Cueillette des Prunes once likely formed the central panel of a monumental decorative triptych executed by Pierre Bonnard around 1899. The two companion panels, La Cueillette des pommes and Enfants jouant avec une chèvre, are now held in the collection of the Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa. 

Ambitious in both scale and conception, the ensemble ranks among the most accomplished decorative projects of Bonnard’s early career, revealing with remarkable poetic resonance the lush vegetal world that would remain a constant source of inspiration throughout his oeuvre. 

Like many of the works in the collection, La Cueillette des Prunes has remained largely hidden from public view, having last been exhibited in 1956, more than seventy years ago. 

As an early and significant expression of the garden theme to which Bonnard would return throughout his career, the work encapsulates his Arcadian vision, balancing rich colour, decorative harmony and a dreamlike atmosphere to create a lyrical meditation on the relationship between humanity and nature.

 

TIMELESS TINTORETTO

From 11 September 2026 to 24 January 2027, the Musée Jacquemart-André is showcasing the work of one of the leading figures of Italian Mannerism, Jacomo Robusti, known as Tintoretto (1518/19–1594). 

This exhibition presents, for the first time in France, a comprehensive overview of Tintoretto’s entire career and demonstrates how his artistic legacy has transcended temporal and geographic boundaries, establishing him as a key influence on 19th-century French painting. 

Jacomo Robusti, nicknamed ‘Tintoretto’ in reference to his father’s trade as a dyer, established himself as a major figure in 16th-century painting. In Venice, where he remained for all his life, his ambition found fertile ground. It was in this capital of culture that his remarkably long career unfolded. Although little is known about his training, he began making a name for himself in the late 1540s with prestigious commissions such as Miracle of the Slave (1548). During the second half of the century, at the head of a large workshop, he dominated the market for large-scale decorative cycles commissioned for civic buildings, including the Doge’s Palace (the Paradise fresco, from 1588) and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (1564–1588).

Emphasising the modernity of his art, the exhibition reveals the singularity of an artist endowed with the most incredible creative energy, and described by Vasari as ‘the most formidable mind that painting has ever known’ (1568). A complex artist who defies categorisation, Tintoretto produced a body of work that is admired and controversial in equal measure, characterised by bold compositions, dizzying perspectives, spectacular lighting effects and rapid, bold brushstrokes – the famous prestezza. Combining the sculptural drawing (disegno) of the Tuscan masters — particularly that of Michelangelo, who fascinated him — and the Venetian colorito of Titian, his rival, he brought the Renaissance in Venice to its zenith. 

Bringing together some forty paintings and graphic works from public and private collections in France, Italy and elsewhere, the exhibition allows visitors to appreciate the diversity and scope of Tintoretto’s oeuvre through a number of key themes. Major religious works, such as The Miracle of St Augustine (1547–1549, Palazzo Chiericati, Vicenza) and The Trinity (c. 1561–1562, Galleria Sabauda, Turin), demonstrate, for example, his ability to breathe new life into sacred subjects through dramatic interpretation.

Meanwhile, mythological and Old Testament figures, such as Susanna and the Elders (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), Leda and the Swan (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) and Danaë (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), reveal a similar creative vein, blending sensuality, humour and critical distance.

A series of autograph drawings and studies highlights the fundamental role of drawing in Tintoretto’s practice, challenging the idea that he was a painter who worked without preparatory sketches and offering a response to the paragone, the traditional debate opposing painting and sculpture. Another section is devoted to Tintoretto’s portraits, which are remarkable for their psychological intensity and formal modernity, such as Portrait of a Lady in Mourning (c. 1550–1555, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden).

The exhibition concludes with a reflection on Tintoretto’s influence on 19th-century French painting. His sombre, passionate nature, narrative boldness and immense creativity made Tintoretto a resolutely modern figure who would go on to influence 19th-century artists. His work, characterised by a tension between order and disorder, construction and dissolution, was therefore particularly well received in France. Several examples illustrate how the Venetian painter inspired artists striving for radical innovation. In the late 18th century, the painter and engraver Dominique Vivant Denon saw in him an artist who broke the academic tradition. Subsequently, his work influenced more artists in contrasting ways: for classical artists like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Tintoretto served as both model and counter-model, while Romantic artists, such as Léon Cogniet and Eugène Delacroix, celebrated the expressive and dramatic power of his art. 

Édouard Manet’s copy of Tintoretto’s Self-Portrait (1854, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon), exhibited here alongside its model on loan from the Louvre, is the most concrete example of this idea. Masters such as Manet and Cezanne thus saw Tintoretto as a true trailblazer, admiring his free-handed style, which eschews idealisation and deeply questions the canons of representation. From Ingres to Cezanne, Delacroix and Manet, this unique exhibition highlights the unexpected connection between Tintoretto and the French avant-garde, and demonstrates how his art — though often misunderstood — forms part of the long history of modernity.

CURATORS

Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa is director of the Palazzo Madama in Turin and president of the Ateneo di Scienze, Lettere e Arti di Bergamo. He is also a lecturer in modern art history at the University of Bergamo. For the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, he curated the ‘Antonello da Messina’ (2006), ‘Giovanni Bellini’ (2008), ‘Lorenzo Lotto’ (2011), ‘Tintoretto’ (2012) and ‘Titian’ (2013) exhibitions. He has also curated numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including in Paris, Brussels, Guangzhou, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Riga, Suzhou, Tokyo, Yerevan, Zadar and Zagreb. His ‘Europa’ exhibition, which explores the founding values of the peoples of Europe, has been shown in 44 countries across five continents. He is the author of over three hundred scientific publications and authoritative monographs.

Neville Rowley is curator of 14th and 15th century Italian paintings at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. He teaches at the École du Louvre and at the Technical University of Berlin. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Gemäldegalerie and the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Villa Medici and the Musée Jacquemart-André, including ‘Giovanni Bellini. Influences croisées’ in 2023. He has published numerous books and articles on art of the Italian Renaissance.

Pierre Curie Pierre Curie is a general heritage curator. Specialising in 17th-century Italian and Spanish painting, he has also worked on 19th-century French painting at the Petit Palais museum, where he began his career as a curator. Subsequently, as head of the painting department at the Inventaire général, he co-authored and edited the Vocabulaire typologique et technique de la peinture et du dessin (published in 2009). Appointed head of the painting section of the restoration department at the Centre de recherche et de restauration des Musées de France in 2007, he coordinated and supervised several major restorations of paintings in national museums (Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt, Poussin, etc.). Pierre Curie has been curator of the Jacquemart-André Museum since January 2016 and, as such, co-curator of all its exhibitions.

IMAGES 

Tintoret, La Création des animaux, 1550-1553, huile sur toile, 140 x 196 cm, Venise, Gallerie dell'Accademia crédit photo: Eric Vandeville / akg-images

Tintoret, Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie et un ange (connu comme « Le Tintoret de David Bowie ») vers 1557-1570, huile sur toile, 177.1 x 99.3 cm collection particulière, Crédit photo : private collection. All rights reserved. Édouard Manet, Copie de l'Autoportrait du Tintoret, 1854, huile sur toile, 64 x 50 cm, Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts © Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon/Hugo Martens Tintoret, Adoration des bergers, v. 1555-1560, huile sur toile, 162x284cm, Paris, Conservation des œuvres d'arts religieuses et civiles de Paris, église Saint-Honoré d'Eylau, en dépôt à l'église Saint-Eustache © Ville de Paris, COARC/Claire Pignol. Tintoret, Le Miracle de saint Augustin, 1547 - 1549, huile sur toile, 255 x 174,5 cm, Vicence, Musei Civici di Vicenza - Palazzo Chiericati credit : Musei Civici di Vicenza - Museo Civico di Palazzo Chiericati

Tiintoret, La Déploration du Christ, deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle, huile sur toile, 104 x 137 cmNancy, musée des Beaux-Arts, dépôt du musée du Louvre Crédit photographique : Thomas Clot

Tintoret, Danaé, vers 1570-1583, huile sur toile, 142 x 182 cm, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts Image © Lyon MBA - Photo Martial Couderette

Tintoret, Portrait d'homme, vers 1550, huile sur toile marouflée sur panneau, 113 x 87,5 cmOxford, Christ Church Picture Galleryavec l'aimable autorisation du Governing Body de Christ Church, Oxford Crédit photo : © The Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford

Tintoret, Suzanne et les vieillards, vers 1555-1556, huile sur toile, 146 cm × 193,6 cm, Vienne, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie ©KHM-Museumsverband

Tintoret, Autoportrait, vers 1588, huile sur toile, 63 x 52 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, département des Peintures Crédit photo : © GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre) Jean-Gilles Berizzi

Paul Cézanne, La Tentation de saint Antoine, vers 1870 huile sur toile, 57 x 76 cm, Zurich, Kunsthaus / Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection Photo credit: Kunsthaus Zürich

Eugène Delacroix, Crucifixion, 1835, huile sur toile, 182 x 135 cmVannes, musée des Beaux-Arts, la Cohue, Crédit photo : collection musée des beaux-arts de Vannes © Musées de Vannes

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, L'Arétin dans l'atelier de Tintoret, 1848, huile sur toile, 44.1 x 35.8 cm New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.185) Crédit photo : Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - CC0

Tintoret, Étude d'après un moulage de la sculpture de Michel-Ange dite 'Le Jour', pierre noire et gouache sur papier, 27 x 37,8 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques © GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre) / Michèle Bellot

Tintoret, Léda et le cygne vers 1578, huile sur toile, 162 x 218 cmFlorence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, crédit photo : ©Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi

Tintoret, La Création des animaux, 1550-1553, huile sur toile, 140 x 196 cm, Venise, Gallerie dell'Accademia crédit photo: Eric Vandeville / akg-images

ARTIST ROOMS: Robert Rauschenberg

Tate Modern

21 September 2026 to December 2027

 

Robert Rauschenberg is organised in collaboration with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. It is curated by Gregor Muir, Director of Collection, Tate; Andrew de Brún, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern; and Julia Blaut, Senior Curator, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

 

Robert Rauschenberg, Rasputin's Revenge Early Winter Glut 1987. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Photo: Ron Amstutz

ARTIST ROOMS: Robert Rauschenberg, a large-scale free display in the ARTIST ROOMS gallery at Tate Modern, opens on 21 September. It brings together over 20 works by Rauschenberg (1925-2008) spanning three decades, including paintings, prints, and his unique kinetic and light works. At the heart of the presentation are a selection of the artist’s renowned Glut sculptures, including three newly gifted by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to mark 100 years since the artist’s birth. These have been donated to Tate Americas Foundation for the ARTIST ROOMS collection, which is jointly shared by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland. The display at Tate Modern foregrounds how these works relate to the artist’s engagement with dance and performance.

One of the most influential American artists of the 20th century, Rauschenberg’s practice moved freely between painting, collage, sculpture, performance and photography. In his early practice in the 1950s, he challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism in the US, making work that blurred the distinction between art and everyday life. In Almanac 1962, one of his first silkscreen works, he printed imagery taken from books, magazines and his own photographs onto canvas. Integrating found objects such as Coca-Cola signs, ironing boards and newspapers into his work, he developed a series combining aspects of painting and sculpture called ‘Combines’. In works like Dylaby 1962, he gives new purpose to these overlooked materials, questioning how we assign meaning to the objects around us.

Fuelled by a curiosity about how he could work with the materials around him, Rauschenberg invented new methods of art making. Taking their inspiration from the abandoned petrol stations, cars and machinery that dotted the Texan landscape in the wake of the 1980s oil surplus, his Gluts series from 1986-94 are made from scrap metal scavenged from junkyards. He saw these works as a stark warning about the consequences of the ‘throwaway culture’ of capitalist society. Three Gluts gifted by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation are central to the display at Tate Modern. Combining layers of crumpled metal, G-I Glut 1986 is one of a group made using petrol station signage which together reveal the phrase ‘$AVING$, while Rasputin's Revenge Early Winter Glut 1987 embraces the readymade colours and dents of the salvaged materials.

Rauschenberg was attracted to the sense of 'liveness' he could achieve when he activated his work with performance and movement, and frequently made costumes, sets and props throughout his career. Made from scrap metal, Mobile Cluster Glut (Neapolitan) 1987 is adapted from a set he made for a performance of Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Lateral Pass 1985, one of the most important works in postmodern dance. Film documentation of the performance, which took place in Naples, Italy, shows the pieces suspended above the stage. Also on display are examples of the costumes he designed for the dancers in Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset 1983, for which he screen-printed his own photographs of urban and industrial scenes onto transparent fabric.

Rauschenberg was interested in technology’s potential for artmaking. The display features an example from his Carnal Clocks series 1969, kinetic artworks that keep time, containing a mechanism that switches electrical lights on and off at regular intervals. He also experimented with new printing techniques in works such as

Tides, Drifts and Gulf from 1969, creating overlapping images to evoke reflections on the surface of water. Inspired by the colour and texture of silk he saw in Ahmedabad, India, he made a series of works titled the Jammers 1975-6, made predominantly from sewn fabric with rattan poles. In another textile-based series the Hoarfrosts 1974-6, transferred imagery is obscured by multiple layers of fabric.

Mobile Cluster Glut (Neapolitan)1987 Assembled metal with plastic hose104.8 x 240 x 47 cmRobert Rauschenberg Foundation© Robert Rauschenberg FoundationPhoto: Ron Amstutz

G-I Glut 1986 Assembled metal264.2 x 142.2 x 61 cmRobert Rauschenberg Foundation© Robert Rauschenberg FoundationPhoto: Ron Amstutz

Almanac 1962 Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas243.8 x 152.4 cmTate. Presented by the Friends of the TateGallery 1969© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Dylaby 1962 Combine: oil, metal objects, metal spring, metalCoca-Cola sign, ironing board, and twine onunstretched canvas tarp on wood support224 x 182 x 48.5 cm variableRobert Rauschenberg Foundation©Robert Rauschenberg FoundationPhoto: Ron Amstutz

Norman Lewis: Jumping Jive,

 Painting, like music, had something inherent in itself which I had to discover and which has nothing to do with what exists, it has another kind of reality.— Norman Lewis [1]

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Norman Lewis: Jumping Jive, the gallery’s seventh solo exhibition dedicated to the work of Norman Lewis (1909–1979). Featuring paintings and drawings representative of Lewis’ over four-decade career, the exhibition highlights the vital role music—from jazz and blues to classical, pop, and reggae—played in the artist’s life and practice. An important thematic and conceptual throughline in Lewis’ oeuvre, music appears in early figurative depictions of bands and jazz clubs, in later abstract compositions that variously recall music notes or pulsing soundwaves, and in titular references to songs, lyrics, or musical icons. As Lewis increasingly embraced abstraction in the mid-1940s, the intuitive, riff-based method of jazz composition guided his approach to painting. This focused survey of Lewis’ diverse body of work not only evidences the inspiration the artist gleaned from music but also reveals how his understanding of its power as a universal language enriched and sustained his relentless pursuit of artistic expression.

The exhibition takes its title from the earliest work on view, Jumping Jive (1942). Featuring five musicians framed by brushstrokes that seemingly reverberate off the players and their instruments, the painting is exemplary of Lewis’ early representational style and is a reference to the 1939 hit by Cab Calloway, Frank Froeba, and Jack Palmer titled Jumpin' Jive. As Lewis moved from social realism towards abstraction, the figures that once populated canvases such as Musicians (1943) dissolved into the dynamic linework seen in works such as Street Musicians (1948). Painted in 1966, Untitled (Players Four) is a later variation on this familiar theme in which bold swaths of color serve to loosely and lyrically define the bodies of four musicians. Working in a non-representational style for most of his career, Lewis created a robust oeuvre that consistently reflected the sights and sounds that defined his life, including the music he listened to, his natural and urban environs, and the American Civil Rights Movement.

Music is also key to understanding Lewis’ approach to abstraction, as he was greatly influenced by the improvisational nature of jazz. In works on paper from the 1950s, stylized, calligraphic lines suggest the spirited syncopations of up-tempo music or the rhythmic beating of bird wings. Paintings from this era feature staccato brushstrokes and pulsing, atmospheric compositions. Reflecting on the dynamic quality of Lewis’ work, critic Henry McBride wrote: "There is a temptation to think the artist a musician as well as a painter for he starts in softly on the blank page like a musician improvising and as he sees a suitable motif taking shape, swings into it with confidence, plays it up for what it is worth and then, satisfied he has gone the whole way with it, permits it to fade softly out."[2]

Lewis often directly acknowledged his indebtedness to specific songs or albums in his titles. As is the case with many of Lewis’ titles, Double Cross (1971), a painting that shares its name with a 1968 album by jazz saxophonist Hank Crawford, encompasses multiple, evocative meanings. The title is both literal and symbolic, describing the two central crosses embedded in a fiery ground that recall the burnings carried out by the Ku Klux Klan while simultaneously speaking to the sense of betrayal felt by Black Americans as the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement waned. In Lewis’ 1970s Seachange paintings and works on paper—a series whose title is derived from a phrase first sung by Ariel in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610–11)—several dominant threads from the artist’s career converge: his synesthetic tendencies, his reverence for nature, and his commitment to fighting for civil rights. Featuring an echoing, ovoid motif inspired by Lewis’ 1973 trip to Greece to visit Jack Whitten on the island of Crete, the Seachange series evokes the movement and sound of crashing waves and serves as a metaphor for the artist’s hope for societal change in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the latest works on view, Ode to Duke (1977), is a resounding tribute to the spirit of music legend Duke Ellington and a reflection of Lewis’ ability to emulate the expressive power of music. Rendered in deep blue and inky black, the work echoes the emotions of one of Ellington’s biggest hits, “Mood Indigo” (1930), and belongs to Lewis’ 1970s body of blue and black paintings and works on paper. On this important series, curator Ruth Fine noted:

[The blue and black works] introduce new ideas and forms while also pursuing the juxtaposition of opposites that characterized Lewis’s work throughout his life. Engaging the visible and imagined worlds, they conflate the richness of painterly means with the lyrical patterns of calligraphic markings, and explore the subtlest possibilities of color. Both canvases and works on paper encompass the range of universal emotions, responding to the charge of a humanist at work within the visual artists’ milieu.[3]

With gossamer lines that float like musical notations over a resonant field of sound, Ode to Duke embodies Lewis’ career-long pursuit to translate the universalism he felt in music into a visual form.

Accompanying the display of Lewis’ art are selections from the artist’s record collection of nearly 500 titles. Saved by his family and recently archived and cleaned for study and play, Lewis’ collection reveals the scope of his musical interests, which ranged from Johann Sebastian Bach to Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, and Joni Mitchell. The artist’s collection is notable not only for its breadth—it encompasses bebop, blues, classical, disco, funk, reggae, and soul as well as poetry by T. S. Eliot, Australian sing-along “favourites,” and a 1967 spoken word recording by civil rights leader and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.—but also for its depth: the artist owned sixteen Duke Ellington records, the largest number by far of any artist within the collection, followed by eight records from the 1940s by vocal pop group The Ink Spots and seven by jazz musician Eddie Harris. The earliest record in the collection is a 1920 recording of “Whispering” and “The Japanese Sandman” by the American dance band Paul Whiteman and His Ambassador Orchestra, and the latest records were released in 1979, the year the artist died. Lewis’ record collection echoes his artistic trajectory, reflecting his interest in foundational classics, the seismic effect jazz had on both music and midcentury visual artists, and his embrace of the proliferating styles and genres that mirrored the way in which he constantly riffed and built on his earlier work.

1. [1]Norman Lewis, quoted in Archives of American Art Oral History Interview with Henri Ghent on July 14, 1968.
2. [2]Henry McBride, ARTnews (1951), quoted in Thomas Lawson, Norman Lewis: A Retrospective (The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, 1976), n.p.
3. [3]Ruth Fine, ed., Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in association with University of California Press, 2015), 89.
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Sotheby's Reflections on Pop: Works from the Collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein October 7

This October, Sotheby’s will present an offering of works emerging from the personal collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, showcasing five decades of artistic output from the Pop art icon. Bringing together paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, ephemera, prints, and editions, the group offers a broad exploration of Lichtenstein’s practice. This particular selection gives an in-depth look into Lichtenstein’s process and the development of his ideas through various media, showcasing the full range of the artist’s creative process. Taken together, the works capture the retrospective spirit of the Collection and reflect both the range and consistency of Lichtenstein’s vision across multiple mediums and throughout his oeuvre. 

Titled Reflections on Pop: Works from the Collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, the sale comes at a time when fans of Lichtenstein’s work look ahead to the Whitney Museum of American Art’s highly anticipated retrospective, Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, opening to the public just days following the auctions in October. 

With estimates ranging from just $500 up to $1.5 million, the sale offers an opportunity for both established and new collectors to explore and engage with the artist’s body of work and creative development. In a moment when Lichtenstein’s imagery is more in the public eye than ever, Sotheby’s sales give collectors a chance to participate in taking home a piece of his enduring legacy. Reflections on Pop follows Sotheby’s successful auctions of works from the Collection in 2024 and 2025, which were 99% sold. 

Works from the Collection will be offered in two dedicated sales: a 23-lot live auction on 7 October, and an online auction featuring more than 120 works open for bidding from 25 September - 9 October. 

 Collection Highlights 

Interior with Painting of Nude (Study) cut painted paper, cut printed paper, tape, marker, and graphite on paper Executed in 1997 Estimate $1-1.5 million 

& Interior with Painting of Nude (Study) colored pencil and graphite on paper Executed in 1997 Estimate $100,000-150,000 

Executed in 1997, Interior with Painting of Nude (Study) belongs to Roy Lichtenstein's celebrated late Nudes and Interiors series, one of the final and most sophisticated bodies of work created during the last decade of his career. The collage and a drawing of the same name, provide a rare window into the evolution of a composition across different media. Drawings were central to Lichtenstein's work and frequently served as the starting point for paintings, sculptures, and prints. The accompanying drawing captures the artist's formulation of the composition before he expanded it into the complex collage.  Later in his career, Lichtenstein expanded his color palette and removed the black outline which characterized many of his Pop works over the decades. This work showcases a new direction Lichtenstein investigated prior to his passing. The collage presents a tactile counterpoint to Lichtenstein’s signature hard-edge aesthetic, with hand-cut edges, graphite marks, seams, and layered textures that reveal the artist’s hand. Unlike the mechanical appearance of Lichtenstein's final works, the collage exposes the highly constructed nature of his imagery, allowing viewers to witness the artist actively building the composition element by element. The subject reflects the artist's ongoing exploration of the dialogue between interior space, art history, and the female figure - themes that occupied him throughout the 1990s and culminated in the acclaimed Nudes and Interiors series. 

Blue Nude (Study) colored pencil and graphite on Denril Executed in 1995 Estimate $300,000-400,000 

Created in 1995, Blue Nude (Study) directly relates to Blue Nude, one of the most celebrated works from Lichtenstein’s late Nudes series and formerly in the collection of designer Gianni Versace before it sold at Sotheby’s in May 2005. This study offers a rare glimpse into Lichtenstein’s creative process during the final years of his career. Far from simply serving as a preparatory exercise, the drawing allows viewers to trace the evolution and experimentation of the composition before its realization on canvas. Filled with expressive mark-making, the workhighlights the immediacy and intimacy of the artist’s hand in striking contrast to his polished, finished paintings. 

Reflections on “Nancy” (Study) colored pencil and graphite on paper Executed in 1989 Estimate $150,000-200,000 This drawing highlights Lichtenstein’s lifelong engagement with comics, as he revisits “Nancy”, one of the most iconic American comic-strip characters. As a study for his celebrated Reflections series, the work exemplifies Lichtenstein's enduring interest in collapsing traditional distinctions between mass media and high culture and revisiting his canon to find new ways of distilling his pop sensibility. 

Entablature acrylic, sand and graphite on canvas Executed in 1976 Estimate $700,000 - $1,000,000 

Executed between 1971 and 1976, Lichtenstein’s Entablatures series marked a dramatic shift in the artist’s work. 

Moving away from comic book panels and consumer advertising, he turned his attention to architecture - specifically motifs found on American neoclassical facades. Inspired by both Greek and Roman sources and the early 20th-century Beaux-Arts revival as seen in buildings throughout Manhattan, Lichtenstein photographed local architecture and translated its classical entablatures into bold, graphic abstractions. Polished and graphic yet austere and architectural, the work becomes a meditation on the relationship between history and modernity, ornament and structure, and the handmade and mechanically produced. One of just 30 works on canvas within this series, sand from the Southampton beaches near the artist’s Long Island studio reveals traces of the artist’s hand. Works from the Entablatures series reside in prominent museum collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Broad, Los Angeles; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

 

Glass II (Prototype) painted wood Executed in 1976 Estimate $300,000-500,000 

Glass II (Prototype) represents a pivotal moment when Lichtenstein translated the visual language of Pop Art from two-dimensional images into three-dimensional form. As the prototype for the celebrated bronze sculpture Glass II, Glass II (Prototype) reveals how he developed and refined the formal strategies that would ultimately be realized in the finished sculptural edition. Rather than sculpting a realistic glass, Lichtenstein reconstructs the graphic devices used to depict one, including contour lines, reflections, shadows, and stripes to create a drawing in space.

More Images

Composition III

Brushstroke

Roy Lichtenstein, Water Lilies - Blue Lily Pads (Study)

Modern Painting with Fishes (study)

Next Wave Festival Poster (study)

Wall explosion III  (study)

Landscape Mobile  (study)

Red Lamp

Reflections on Minerva



Blue Floor  (study)

Sandwich and soda

Ceramic sculpure

Ceramic Plate

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