Wednesday, November 4, 2026
Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction November 18 Part III
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Masterpieces from this sale embody the spirit of artists working at the turn of the 20th century — visionaries who defied convention to forge a bold, modern language of art. Charting the historic threads and cross-continental exchanges linking Impressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and beyond, the Modern Evening Auction celebrates the pivotal developments that have shaped art history.
The Modern Evening Auction will feature highlights from The Armand Hammer Collection, Magnum Opus: A Private Collection of Exceptional Art and Objects Through the Ages, Picasso's Heroic Years: Masterpieces from a Prestigious Family, Shaping Modernity: Property from a Private American Collection and Expanding Horizons: The Hedreen Collection. These works and more will be viewable at Sotheby’s New York this November.
Shaping Modernity: Property from a Private American Collection charts the defining moments in the evolution of modern art. Bringing together exceptional works by the artists who transformed painting between the 19th and 20th centuries, the collection highlights a series of breakthroughs that forever altered the trajectory of art history. The collection, beginning with Impressionism, spans the key Post-Impressionist movements such as Pointillism, Fauvism and reaches forward to the post-war figuration of Francis Bacon, each work embodies a willingness to challenge convention and pursue new possibilities of artistic expression.
The earliest work in the collection L’Oncle Dominique is aptly by Cézanne, whom Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque called “the father of us all.” At the foundation of the collection is Camille Pissarro's Hameau aux environs de Pontoise which elevates the countryside to the fitting subject for progressive art. Alfred Sisley's landscape and Eugène Boudin's beach scene attend to the light and atmosphere of nature observed en plein air. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's portrait of his patron Paul Bérard brims with the luminosity of the finest Impressionist portraits. Paul Signac’s celebrated pointillist composition, Collioure. Les Balancelles (Opus 167) marks a pivotal moment in the development of modern painting with its radical exploration of color and optics. His innovative experiments with color gave rise to the riotous palettes of Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, the defining voices of Fauvism, whose respective views of Collioure, the Thames and the open road show color liberated from description. The collection culminates with Francis Bacon's poignant Self-Portrait, a work that captures both the artist's psychological torment and the refuge that he found in painting. Through a remarkable command of color and gesture, Bacon defines a new self-portraiture, rendering himself with force and fluidity as if caught between states of reality and remembrance. Together, the collection illuminates the artistic innovations through which modern art took shape.
Beginning this November, Sotheby’s will offer some 50 works from the exceptional collection of Richard (“Dick”) and the late Elizabeth (“Betty”) Hedreen. Devoted philanthropists, active supporters of their native Seattle and Washington State, and passionate collectors for six decades, the Hedreens can rightly be considered pioneers, who were among the very first to place considerable emphasis on the visual and intellectual dialogues inherent in juxtaposing art from across the ages, assembling a collection that spans the 15th century to the present day.
Highlights to be offered at Sotheby’s include major paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Cecily Brown, together with a moving Mater Dolorosa by Titian, a striking Northern Renaissance portrait by Georg Pencz, a Baroque masterpiece by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, and more.
Highlights
Type: lot
Roy Lichtenstein
Reflections on "Painter and Model"
Estimate: 20,000,000–30,000,000 USD
Type: lot
Georg Pencz
Portrait of Sigismund Baldinger (1510-1558)
Estimate: 8,000,000–12,000,000
USD
Type: lot
Cecily Brown
Untitled (Shipwreck)
Estimate: 7,000,000–10,000,000
USD
Type: lot
Bartolomeo Cavarozzi
Sacrifice of Isaac
Masterworks of the Modern Evening Auction
Type: lot
René Magritte
L'Ami de l'ordre
Estimate: 25,000,000 – 35,000,000 USD
Type: lot
Edward Hopper
The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet
Estimate: 20,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD
Claude Monet
La Barque bleue
Estimate: 20,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD
Type: lot
Paul Cézanne
Pichet et fruits sur une table
Estimate: 20,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD
Estimate: 7,000,000–10,000,000 USD
Masterworks of the Modern Evening Auction
Type: lot
René Magritte
L'Ami de l'ordre
Estimate: 25,000,000 – 35,000,000 USD
Type: lot
Edward Hopper
The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet
Estimate: 20,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD
Type: lot
Claude Monet
La Barque bleue
Estimate: 20,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD
Type: lot
Paul Cézanne
Pichet et fruits sur une table
Estimate: 20,000,000 – 30,000,000 USD
Sotheby's -- Vision: The Extraordinary Collection of Theodore and Ruth Baum November 16
Vision: The Extraordinary Collection of Theodore and Ruth Baum
A landmark collection of postwar and contemporary art, estimated to exceed $100 million, featuring works by Rothko, Mitchell, Ruscha, Burri, Warhol, Fontana and more, many appearing at auction for the first time in decades.
United by a singular vision, collectors and philanthropists Theodore and Ruth Baum’s passion for life, art, design and philanthropy led them on a deeply personal, decades-long pursuit to cultivate an extraordinary collection – one that was not only among the most distinguished private collections encapsulating the developments of 20th-century art history, but reflective of the forward-thinking vision, refined elegance and intellectual rigor that defined them as partners in life and collecting.
Theodore and Ruth Baum's Palm Beach residence. Art © Estate of Joan Mitchell. Art © The Estate of Tom Wesselmann / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Art © Carl Andre / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Art © Antony Gormley 2026. All rights reserved. Art © 2026 Michelangelo Pistoletto. Photograph by Diana Todorova As storytellers in every sense, the Baums were guided by their insatiable curiosity as they built a collection that transcended movements, generations and geographies. Throughout the course of two decades, they traveled around the world in pursuit of great works by the visionaries of American abstraction, the innovators of Pop, Minimalism and Conceptualism, and the radical experimenters of post-war Italian art, assembling a constellation of artists engaged in dialogue with one another, each work challenging and illuminating its counterpart.
Highlights from the Collection
Type: lot
Mark Rothko
Untitled, 1967
Type: lot
Joan Mitchell
Green Book of Barbara Guest, 1960
Type: lot
Ed Ruscha
Dimple, 1964
Type: lot
Andy Warhol
The Scream (After Edvard Munch), 1984
Type: lot
Alberto Burri
GA1, 1954
Type: lot
Lucio Fontana
Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1960
Type: lot
Andy Warhol
The
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Christie's Old Master Paintings from a Distinguished Private Collection
Julie Le Brun as a Bather
by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun
Leads a group of Old Master Paintings from a Distinguished Private Collection being offered across London and New York sales in December and February
Left to right: New York Old Masters Evening Sale, 3 February 2027, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, Julie Le Brun as a Bather (estimate: $1,800,000-2,200,000) and London Old Masters Evening Sale, 8 December, Henri Pierre Danloux, The Masters Foster, 1792 (estimate: £150,000-250,000)
Christie's is proud to announce that paintings from a distinguished private collection including works by Osias Beert, Jan Massys, Henri-Pierre Danloux, Jan van Huysum, Jan van Os and Mihály Munkácsy will be offered in London's Old Master Evening Sale on 8 December, and Old Master Paintings Part I in New York on 3 February 2027. Highlights will tour to Paris (on view until 4 November) and London (4 – 8 December), ahead of the auctions. The lead lot of the group comes to auction for the very first time in more than two centuries: Julie Le Brun as a Bather by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. This important work returned to public view as part of the landmark retrospective dedicated to Vigée Le Brun at the Grand Palais in Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2015 and 2016 (estimate: $1,800,000-2,200,000).
The subject of the painting is Jeanne-Julie-Louise Le Brun (1780–1819), called Julie, the only child of Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842), one of Europe's most celebrated portraitists in the late-18th and early-19th centuries and Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun (1748–1813), the preeminent dealer, auctioneer and art expert in Paris during the final decades of the Ancien Régime. Vigée Le Brun was one of the few women artists to be elected to the Académie Royale in Paris, in 1783, and served as the official portraitist to Queen Marie Antoinette, before fleeing France at the outbreak of the French Revolution and achieving international fame across Europe. This painting was executed in 1792, when artist and daughter were living in exile in Italy. This striking image of Julie was acquired through the intermediary of Jean-Baptiste Greuze by the Russian nobleman and art collector Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov, in whose family it remained until the 20th century. It is unlined and preserved in a near-miraculous state.
Vigée Le Brun painted images of Julie throughout her childhood and adolescence, most famously in two double portraits featuring mother and daughter in a tender embrace which are among the most beloved works in the Louvre. As with earlier portraits of her daughter, Vigée drew from a rich visual tradition when crafting Julie's pose for this painting.
Also painted in 1792 whilst in exile from Revolutionary Paris, Henri-Pierre Danloux's charming double portrait of the sons of Constantia and Richard Foster, with cricket bats in a wooded landscape, launched his career in London when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793.
Further highlights include
a beautifully rendered still-life by Jan van Huysum, which will tour with the Le Brun to Paris, and
Mihály Munkácsy's After Dessert - Die Jungen Hunde, painted circa 1890.
Fruit and Flowers in a Terracotta Vase (also known as A Rich Still Life of Summer Flowers), an 18th-century oil painting by the Dutch still-life master Jan van Os (1744–1808)
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