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11 Unmissable Lots From the London Sales You Should Save Now
Whether you’re looking for an Impressionist masterpiece or a contemporary thought-provoker, our Modern & Contemporary London Sales, starting 24 June, have it all.
N ext week, Sotheby’s London will host The London Sales: four incredible auctions led by Masterpieces of the Lewis Collection and Modern & Contemporary Evening and Day Sales. Presented by The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, The London Sales will bring works of art that haven't been seen in the public for decades to auction—some for the first time ever. Beginning on 24 June and concluding the following day, the auctions will feature works that would serve as crowning pieces in any private collection. Looking for inspiration? Our specialists have assembled their highlights from the sales—make sure you save them now.
Peter Doig, Cabin Essence, 1993-1994
One of the crowning achievements of Peter Doig’s early career, Cabin Essence occupies a singular position within the artist’s illustrious oeuvre: monumental in scale, technically audacious, and profoundly destabilising in its treatment of memory, architecture and landscape. Painted between 1993 and 1994, the work belongs to the artist’s celebrated Concrete Cabin series, a suite of nine paintings that emerged from Doig’s enduring fascination with Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation at Briey-en-Forêt; a seventeen-story, partially abandoned modernist housing complex in north-eastern France that the artist first encountered in the early 1990s.
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959
Mark Rothko’s Untitled from 1959 is a dazzling embodiment of the artist’s legendary abstractions. Recently featured in the celebrated exhibition of the artist’s paintings on paper at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Untitled is an important and rare example of Rothko’s legendary practice. "This work's extraordinary luminosity is achieved through Rothko's exquisite feathered brushstrokes,” says Contemporary Art Specialist Kelsey Macpherson, “the underlayer of scarlet red flickers through the golden yellow like sparking embers."
Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1907
Painted at a landmark moment during Monet's career, Nymphéas belongs to the pivotal group of water lily paintings executed between 1904 and 1909, a period during which the artist radically transformed the language of landscapes. Dispensing with the horizon line and dissolving spatial boundaries, Monet rendered the surface of his pond as a boundless field of light, colour, and reflection.
Hurvin Anderson, Untitled (Beach Scene), 2003
Hurvin Anderson’s ethereal and spellbinding Untitled (Beach Scene) emerged directly from his encounter with Trinidadian topography, the painting constitutes one of the artist's earliest investigations into sites of leisure as psychologically and historically charged spaces. "Memory is the trigger,” said Hurvin Anderson of his work. “I will start from an idea about a place. Usually once I’ve made the first thing, I realize there’s a whole new aspect. By the end it’s not necessarily associated with the thing you started with.”
Claude Monet, Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville, 1870
Painted at a formative moment in the emergence of Impressionism, this intimate portrait of Camille Monet, the artist’s beloved first wife, stands as a striking example of the artist’s pioneering plein air practice. It is distinguished by its immediacy, spontaneity, and freshness of execution.
Wassily Kandinsky, Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch) (Detail of Improvisation II (Funeral March)), 1909
The years between 1909 and 1911 mark Kandinsky’s breakthrough into a purely abstract idiom—one of the defining moments in 20th-century art. Dating from the beginning of this crucial period, Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch) belongs among the group of works he called "Improvisations" and directly relates to the monumental Improvisation II in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. In its combination of figurative elements with rich swathes of unassociated colour, the present work encapsulates the developments in Kandinsky’s work at this exciting time.
George Condo, Yellow Seated Woman, 2006
George Condo's Yellow Seated Woman stands as a compelling example of the artist's lifelong engagement with portraiture. Fragmenting the figure into disjointed yet cohesive forms, the work offers one of the most vivid articulations of Condo's enduring fascination with the instability of identity, merging art historical tradition with a deeply personal contemporary vision.
Kees van Dongen, Au bois (Au bois de Boulogne), circa 1909
Executed at a decisive moment in his Parisian career, Au bois de Boulogne captures Van Dongen’s bold embrace of Fauvism, where colour becomes the driving force of meaning. Through striking contrasts of luminous greens and deep shadow, he dramatises a fleeting encounter between a mounted man and a woman, transforming it into a scene charged with ambiguity and modern tension. Set in the Bois de Boulogne, the painting fuses sharp social observation with a radically simplified, theatrical composition. In doing so, Van Dongen reimagines the tradition of genre painting for a modern urban world, using vivid, non-naturalistic colour and compressed space to heighten both immediacy and psychological intrigue.
George Condo, Zombie Modernism, 2015
George Condo's Zombie Modernism occupies a key place within the artist's mature practice. First exhibited in his 2016 solo exhibition Entrance to the Void, the work brings together Condo's trademark fragmented figures with a title that nods to contemporary pop culture, marking one of the most vivid expressions of his lifelong dialogue between art historical tradition and the present moment.
Félix Vallotton, Le 14 juillet, Dieppe or Coup de vent à Dieppe, 1903
Félix Vallotton’s Le 14 juillet, Dieppe from 1903 marks a decisive shift from his Nabi period toward a more considered, memory-based approach to landscape, in which the festive setting of Bastille Day is distilled into a carefully structured interplay of architecture and atmosphere. Painted in the studio, the work prioritizes spatial rhythm and collective movement over anecdotal detail, combining decorative clarity with a newly articulated depth and a richer, more nuanced palette. Acquired from the artist by Bernheim-Jeune in 1904, exhibited in London in 1910 at the Grafton Galleries, and purchased there by the present owner's family, the work has remained in the same private collection ever since.
Yoshitomo Nara, Crap Boy, 2012
Yoshitomo Nara's Crap Boy is a small but striking example of the artist's enduring fascination with childhood and rebellion. Created in coloured pencil on corrugated board in 2012, the work was included in the landmark retrospective Nara Yoshitomo: a bit like you and me, marking its importance within his broader practice.
