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PICASSO'S MISTRESS TO FETCH $40Million AT SOTHEBY'S
report by Rachel Le Goff
Picture this, December 10th 1938, a sunny Winter's day in France
chez Picasso, his striking dark mistress is in the garden and Picasso is
inspired to paint her portrait. He paints through the day to finish "Femme
assise dans un jardin" before night fall. Sixty years later Sotheby's
believe it will bring at least US$40 million in their auction of Impressionist
and Modern Art in New York on November 10th. It helps that the painting
comes from the collection of Eleanore and Daniel Saidenberg,
who were Picasso's US agents from 1955 until the artist's death in 1973.
The model Dora Maar (real name Theodora Markovic) died two years ago in
Paris aged eighty-nine. The portrait is one of 46 works from the Saidenberg
collection to be auctioned. Nor is it the only star in a catalogue which
features Picasso's "La Statuaire" (1925) with an estimate
of up to US$18 million.
Footnote : No doubt to coincide with the high profile auction
of her famous portrait at Sotheby's, the French auction house Piasa/Drouot
are holding a sale of photographs by Dora Maar from her estate.
Called THE FINAL RENDEZ-VOUS, the auction will be held on November
19th, 1999 at 9pm 5, rue Drouot, 75009 Paris. PIASA held another
auction from the estate of Dora Maar in May of this year which sold
personal objects and souvenirs related to her life with Picasso.
SOTHEBY’S TO SELL THE COLLECTION OF ELEANORE AND DANIEL SAIDENBERG ON NOVEMBER 10, 1999 IN NEW YORK
--The Estate of the Owners of the Saidenberg Gallery,
-- Femme Assise dans un Jardin, One of the Finest
Sotheby’s in New York will sell paintings and sculpture from the Collection of Eleanore and Daniel Saidenberg in a single-owner sale on November 10, 1999. Assembled by the owners of the Saidenberg Gallery, Picasso’s American representative from 1955 until the artist’s death in 1973, the sale brings to market one of the greatest portraits ever painted by Picasso, Femme Assise dans un Jardin. Among the group of 46 works are other paintings and sculpture by Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger and Georges Braque. Speaking of the sale, Charles Moffett, Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist department, said, “The Saidenberg Gallery occupied a central position in New York’s cultural life for decades, and the Saidenbergs introduced a generation of American collectors not only to the works of Picasso, but to the works of many other great European modern masters, including Gris, Leger and Braque.” Eleanore and Daniel Saidenberg
La Statuaire is a key neo-classical work of 1925 which depicts a female figure posing formally beside a modelling stand on which rests a bust of an elderly man. The painting was executed while on a trip to Monte Carlo which Picasso made with his wife Olga Koklova and their young son Paulo at the invitation of Serge Diaghilev. It was painted at a transitional period in his personal life during which the artist’s budding relationship with Marie-Therese Walter threatened the stability of his seven-year marriage to Olga. Picasso himself chose to include La Statuaire in a major exhibition of his work at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1932. The Saidenbergs acquired La Statuaire from Leigh Block, Eleanore Saidenberg’s brother, who was also a great collector. La Statuaire is estimated at $12 - 18 million. Other Works in the Saidenberg Collection
AUCTION: Wednesday, November 10 at 7pm EXHIBITION: Friday, November 5 10am to 5pm
IMPORTANT WORKS BY KEY IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ARTISTS IN SOTHEBY’S NOVEMBER 11 – 12, 1999 SALES New York, N.Y. – Sotheby’s Fall sales of Impressionist and Modern paintings and sculpture include important works by artists including Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Modigliani, Picasso and Chagall. Highlights will be exhibited in Paris, Zurich and Los Angeles prior to their sale at Sotheby’s in New York on the evening of Thursday, November 11, 1999. David Norman, Director of the New York Impressionist and Modern Art department and Senior Vice President of Sotheby’s, said: “The sale includes major works by some of the masters of Impressionist and modern art including a superb painting by Monet executed in 1876, depicting his wife in a field of flowers, which is an ideal summation of the Impressionists’ aesthetic. Also included is the greatest sculptural work by Degas and a ravishing nude by Modigliani. The sale is rich in examples of Picasso’s work and we are privileged to have what is possibly the finest Chagall to appear at auction for more than a generation – the early masterpiece of 1911, Le Village Russe, de la Lune. The majority of the pieces have been consigned from private collections and have not been on the market for many years.” The highlight of the Part I sale on November 10 is Claude Monet’s Dans La Prairie, an oil on canvas, signed and dated ’76. This intimate study shows the artist’s wife, Camille, reading a book while reclining in a meadow flecked with the colors of wild flowers. Monet, his wife, and son, Jean, left Paris in 1871 to seek the peace of the countryside in Argenteuil, a town on the River Seine about 20 minutes by train from the capital. During this period, Camille became one of the artist’s principal subjects and he painted her in a variety of poses which successfully integrate the figure and the open-air setting. Dans la Prairie was first shown in the third Impressionist group exhibition which was also the first time that the term ‘Impressionism’ had been used to describe the group as a whole. The painting was formerly in the collection of Theodore Duret, one of the first great scholar-critics of the Impressionist movement and is estimated at $16/20 million. In the spring of 1891 Monet began a group 24 paintings of poplars located two kilometers from his house in Giverny. The poplars lined the banks of the Epte in the nearby village of Limetz. Not long after Monet began to paint the poplars, the town decided to auction them off as they had been planted for their wood. In order to continue his paintings, Monet had to enter into a partnership with a local wood merchant to save the trees. In 1892 15 Poplars were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery and the present work was number 14 in the catalogue. The oil on canvas is estimated at $10/15 million. Nudes by Amedeo Modigliani are generally acclaimed as the artist’s greatest accomplishment. His Nu Assis sur un Divan (La Belle Romaine), an oil on canvas painted in 1917, is a compelling example estimated at $12/16 million. The sensual appeal of the work is heightened by the model’s alluring pose. Two Modigliani nudes hanging in the window of the Berthe Weill Gallery in Paris prompted the police to close the artists first one-man exhibition in 1917. The nude has many of the features that characterize Modigliani’s post-1914 work; the twisting pose, richly applied brushwork, almond-shaped eyes and the stylized facial features. Picasso’s Garçon á la Collerette belongs to the major series of paintings of 1905, the "rose Period", which take as their subject the itinerant circus performers whose impoverished lives provided such an apt metaphor for the struggles of Picasso and his fellow artists at the time. The painting has a delicate palette of rusty reds, subdued pinks and ochers. The boy’s gesture is equally poetic and subtle and his raised right hand is an echo of the artist’s own hand as he brushed the surface of the board. The gouache on board is estimated at $10/15 million. A touching portrait of Picasso’s daughter Maria de la Concepcion, known as Maya, playing on the beach with a small boat and two balls is another highlight. Maya was named after Picasso’s sister who had died of diphtheria in 1895 at the age of eight. She was the model for a stylistically diverse group of portraits painted in 1938 and the present portrait is a touching image of childhood, very different in tone from the numerous portraits of Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. The oil on canvas is estimated at $6/8 million. A portrait of Dora Maar painted by Picasso a year later, is estimated at $2.5/3.5 million. Picasso met Dora in January 1936 and although he was still married to Olga Koklova and having an illicit affair with Marie-Thérèse, he began an intense relationship with Dora. The portraits of her are among the most psychologically penetrating works of Picasso’s career. This work is one of two portraits of Maar which Picasso painted on the same day in 1939. In it the figure is imbued with a lighter spirit, evoked by soft, flesh-like tones and a decorative hat. However, her mouth is tightly clenched, her hair rigidly constructed and her left eye is rimmed with red, recalling Picasso’s comment: “For me [Dora Maar] is the weeping woman. For years I have painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me.” Following the success of the record-breaking sale of a still-life by Paul Cézanne from the Whitney Collection, which sold for $60.5 million, a second, smaller example will be offered in the November 11th sale. Cézanne’s still-lives have long been recognized as among his greatest achievements. His frequent choice of simple fruits over elaborate bouquets and humble props such as plain ceramic plates, pitchers and table linens on a rustic wooden kitchen table hide the enormous complexity and inventiveness of these works. In this superb example of the mature still-lives of the 1890s, Cézanne uses an earthenware jug and fruit set against patterned blue drapery with the floor of his studio shown beyond the table top. Talking about his still-lives, Cézanne commented: “The main thing is the modeling; one should not even say modeling, but modulating.” The oil on canvas is estimated in excess of $15 million. Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans, modeled in wax, was the only sculpture exhibited during Degas’ lifetime and it was first seen publicly in the sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881 where its astonishing realism shocked many contemporary critics. The model for the child was Marie van Goethem, the daughter of a Belgian laundress and tailor and whose sisters were ballet students at the Opéra. This bronze figure, cast in 1922, with muslin skirt, satin hair ribbon and wooden base stands at 38 ½ inches (97.8cm.) is estimated at $9/12 million. Marc Chagall’s Le Village Russe, de la Lune, an
oil on canvas from 1911, a pivotal period in Chagall’s career as an artist,
is also included. He had left his home in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1910 for
Paris and said: “ I came to Paris as though driven by destiny…..I came
with thoughts and dreams such as one can only have when one is twenty.”
He saw the work of the Fauves and the Cubists and lodged in a room next
to Modigliani. However, despite his new environment, his work in his first
year in Paris focused on peasant life in his hometown. Chagall depicts
the highly colorful village scene from the perspective of an outsider,
literally as if seen ‘from the moon.’ It is estimated at $9/12 million.
Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) is represented in the sale by one of his finest self-portraits. Foujita arrived in Paris from his native Japan in 1913 and rapidly gained a wide circle of acquaintances. He was introduced to Picasso and soon befriended many of the recent immigrant artists, notably Modigliani, Pascin, Soutine, Kisling, Zadkine and others. Through Henri Seeholzer, a well-known Swiss international lawyer, he was introduced to a number of French society figures who commissioned portraits from him. His Mon Portrait, which is signed both in French and Japanese and dated 1926, is a self-portrait in watercolor, oil, gold leaf, pen and ink, brush and ink and crayon on silk. Its first owner was Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan, who together with Lily T. Bliss and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was one of the founding trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929. In this portrait he depicts himself in the clutter of his studio surrounded by portfolios of drawings, brushes and an ink stone and his low worktable. Perched on his back, his cat gazes into the distance. The painting is estimated at $1/1.5 million. AUCTION: Imps I - Thursday, November 11 at 7pm
EXHIBITION: Friday, November 5 10am to 5pm
RLG
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