S otheby’s is honored to present Alice Neel’s World: Works from the Brand Family Collection as top highlights of the Contemporary Evening and Day Sales this November. Windows (Side of Building) (Lot 102 - Contemporary Evening Auction) and Blue House (Lot 613 - Contemporary Day Auction) have been held in the Brand Family Collection for more than five decades, a testament to the Brands’ lifelong friendship with the artist and appreciation of her genius.
Alice Neel became friends with novelist and poet Millen Brand in the 1930s when the two were neighbors in Greenwich Village. Alice painted Millen and he in turn crafted characters based on Neel in his novels, including The Outward Room, 1937, and Some Love, Some Hunger, 1957. Brand and Neel shared a close bond forged through their creative and political passions - both were committed to social justice and civil rights. Millen later introduced Alice Neel to his son, Jonathan, and daughter-in-law, Monika, also New Yorkers. The younger Brand couple in turn became friends of the artist, as well as collectors of her work. During the years of their friendship, Neel painted portraits of all the family members.
Alice Neel as Subject | Jonathan Brand’s Photographs
The Brands have been lifelong champions of Alice Neel and her work. They have generously loaned their paintings, including Windows (Side of Building) and Blue House, to many of Neel’s most pivotal exhibitions around the world. It is with the utmost honor that Sotheby's brings each of these entirely fresh-to-market works to auction this November. Having served as beloved and integral parts of the Brands’ vibrant and creative lives, these paintings represent some of Neel's most celebrated and beloved works. The Brands have been delighted to participate in the steady growth of recognition of Alice Neel as a major American artist by lending their paintings to exhibitions around the world, most recently, Alice Neel: People Come First, organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which subsequently traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and the De Young Museum in San Francisco.
Alongside the November auctions, Sotheby’s is thrilled to showcase the photography of Jonathan Brand and to present some examples of his work made in New York during the same years that Alice Neel was active there. He shared with Neel an enthusiasm for documenting the people and lives of New York City. Brand has been a street photographer for the majority of his years and has photographed people, including his family, wherever he has lived. The family’s first years in the city were spent on the Lower East Side. The Brands subsequently moved to the Upper West Side, where they lived less than 20 blocks from Alice Neel’s apartment and studio.
New York Life Before Jonathan Brand’s Lens
Dr. Julia Dolan (Minor White Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum) on Jonathan Brand:
“When Jonathan Brand, a young man with a camera (if not two) always at the ready, moved with his wife, Monika, and baby daughter, Ulrika, to the Lower East Side in 1959, the city’s population was pushing 8 million. The Brand’s new neighborhood, traditionally open to immigrants, remained crowded, diverse, and lively. Although most tenements had been demolished and replaced in the 1930s, housing was still cramped, pushing many day-to-day activities outside onto stoops, sidewalks, and streets. It was the perfect environment for a young artist inspired by the city and photography. Brand’s day jobs as a census taker and later a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson’s famous advertising agency kept him busy, and his growing family required attention and nurturing. Still, he charted most moments with his camera. He developed film and made prints late at night in his darkroom behind the kitchen, but his constant shooting outpaced his processing, and in later years he worked continuously to catch up, developing rolls of exposed film shot decades earlier.”
(Excerpted from Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968 by Jonathan Brand with an introduction by Julia Dolan, published 2018 by powerHouse Books)
Jon Brand's love of the medium continued to develop and grow through practice and study with some of the most accomplished photographers of the day: Richard Avedon, Garry Winogrand, David Vestal and Bruce Davidson. Brand’s photographs document his appreciation of the everyday, from family life to incidents that he encountered on the streets of New York City - much like Neel’s paintings. It is thanks to his quickness with the camera that he was able to capture gestures and interactions that might have escaped the casual observer.(Excerpted from Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968 by Jonathan Brand with an introduction by Julia Dolan, published 2018 by powerHouse Books)(Excerpted from Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968 by Jonathan Brand with an introduction by Julia Dolan, published 2018 by powerHouse Books)
Jonathan Brand’s series of photographs of museum goers, entitled The Museum of Modern Odd
Sotheby’s gives special thanks to the Brand Family for sharing their father’s story and photography. All photos © Jonathan Brand.
