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Bacon, Pissarro, Chagall & Hockney Lead Exhibition in New York

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The upcoming Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art and Contemporary Art auctions include a superb selection of works by artists such as Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Marc Chagall and Camille Pissarro. Click through to see highlights from the sales which will be on view in New York on 23 & 24 January.

Past Auction
Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art Evening Sale
4 February 2020 | 7:00 PM GMT | London
Past Auction
Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale
5 February 2020 | 10:30 AM GMT | London
Past Auction
Contemporary Art Evening Auction
11 February 2020 | 7:00 PM GMT | London

Bacon, Pissarro, Chagall & Hockney Lead Exhibition in New York

  • Camille Pissarro, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu, 1887-88
    Estimate £8,000,000–12,000,000
    ‘Shot with luminous beams, while the pale meadow, the bare trees, the frosty distances, the fire flaring up and smoking, the wind ruffling the girl’s rough wool skirt, the little boy’s garment, all the details of the work making up one of the most extraordinary effects of cold ever produced in painting.’ Gustave Geffroy, quoted in Pissarro's People (exhibition catalogue), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, San Francisco & Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 2011-12, p. 217

    Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu is one of Pissarro’s great masterpieces. Painted in 1888 at the peak of the artist’s engagement with Neo-Impressionism and conceived on a grand scale, it is a brilliant rendering of light and atmosphere.
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  • Paul Signac, La Corne d’Or. Matin, 1907.
    Estimate £5,000,000–7,000,000
    This work was the only view of Istanbul that Signac decided to exhibit at the 1908 Salon des Indépendants and when the critic Claude Roger-Marx first saw the painting on the walls of the salon it caused him to observe:

    ‘It is important to recognise that no other painter has applied the new technique with more intelligence or authority than Paul Signac. His view of the Corne d’or, which is of the highest order, exemplifies the high intensity of luminous and chromatic expression that Neo-Impressionism can reach’
    Claude Roger-Marx, Le Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, 28th March 1908, p. 117, translated from French
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  • Francis Picabia, Sous les oliviers (Coquetterie), circa 1925-26
    Estimate £1,500,000–2,000,000
    Sous les oliviers (Coquetterie) belongs to one of the most celebrated bodies of work in Picabia’s œuvre, the so-called ‘monster’ paintings dating from the mid-1920s. The figures are rendered in brilliant, strong colours applied with a great sense of energy. Picabia painted Sous les oliviers (Coquetterie) using Ripolin, an industrial enamel paint immensely popular in the early twentieth century for commercial use. Artists including Picabia, Picasso, Moholy-Nagy and Magritte began to incorporate Ripolin into their canvases, resulting with a glossy and often rippled effect. It is no surprise that Picabia, always interested in experimenting with different textures and surfaces, was drawn to the visual effects and modernist connotations of this new medium.
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  • Marc Chagall, Fleurs, circa 1929
    Estimate £1,800,000–2,500,000
    Painted circa 1929 whilst Chagall was living in Paris and exploring the French landscape, Fleurs is a wonderful early example of a motif that would persist throughout Chagall’s œuvre. Combining key examples from the artist’s very personal iconography such as the intertwined lovers, the composition is imbued with a tenderness and intimacy reflective of the profound contentment that Chagall experienced during this time.
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  • Franz Marc, Zwei blaue Esel (Two Blue Donkeys), 1912
    Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
    With its dynamic composition and its otherworldly, dream-like atmosphere, Zwei blaue Esel explores the key subject of Franz Marc’s œuvre - the animal world. Executed at a crucial moment in his career, following the formation of Der Blaue Reiter that Marc co-founded with Wassily Kandinsky in 1911, the present work emphasises the abstracted forms and bold colours that were so central to the group’s ideas and integral to Marc’s own artistic style.

    For over twenty years Zwei blaue Esel was on extended loan to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester, which was one of the first public museums in the United Kingdom and today holds the country’s largest collection of German Expressionist art.
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  • Jean Metzinger, Le cycliste, circa 1912
    Estimate £1,500,000–2,000,000
    Encapsulating a sense of movement and the frenetic atmosphere of pre-war Europe, Le cycliste, captures the spirit of the international avant-garde. His use of strong diagonals and transparent planes finds its parallels in the Italian futurist paintings of Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla whilst concurrently alluding to French Cubism and German Expressionism.
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  • Fernand Léger, Le buste, 1925
    Estimate £1,300,000–1,600,000
    Verging between figuration and abstraction, Le buste combines purely abstract forms with recognisable images of a bust seen in profile and a flower. In this composition, Léger juxtaposed two ways of painting: the figure and the plant are rendered in soft, curved shapes in a chiaroscuro technique which stands in sharp contrast to the flatly painted planes of pure, unmodulated pigment used for the abstract passages.
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  • Fernand Léger, Nature morte, 1923
    Estimate £2,200,000–2,800,000
    Léger’s art of the early 1920s was characterised by a shift away from the abstract, mechanical inspirations of the preceding years, as he embraced the domestic, ‘animated’ settings and a lively bright palette. Reflecting the artist’s fascination with film and his use of the bold flat colours that foreshadow the Pop Art movement, Nature morte is an exceptional example of the way Léger’s art responded to the complexities and changing pace of modern life.
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  • Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta, 1954
    Estimate £600,000–800,000
    ‘It is the miracle of his genius that out of the humble boxes, tin cans, outmoded oil lamps, and dusty bottles, emerge works of art full of poetry and often most justly called “songs without words”.’

    Vitale Bloch in Giorgio Morandi: Paintings and Prints (exhibition catalogue), Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1954.
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  • Personnages et oiseau devant le soleil, 1952.
    Estimate £1,500,000–2,000,000
    ‘This theme provides us with one of the keys to Miró’s cosmic imagination: it expounds the conflict between the earthly and aerial elements and, in the dialogue between the woman and the bird, renders the precariousness of the balance achieved between them.’

    Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 485
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  • Camille Pissarro, Le Pont-Royal, après-midi, temps couvert, 1903.
    Estimate £1,200,000–1,800,000
    Pissarro’s unwavering interest in the relationship between man and his environment led him away from the pastoral scenes of Eragny and back to the bustling boulevards and café’s of Paris in 1897. This move was to result in his last and most celebrated series of Paris cityscapes. Le Pont-Royal, après-midi, temps couvert belongs to his fourth and final series created from the artist’s room at the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire on the left bank, overlooking the Pont Royal and the Jardins des Tuileries. The high vantage point best allowed Pissarro to repeat his chosen motif in varying lights and seasons.
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  • Marc Chagall, Bouquets d'œillets aux amoureux en vert, 1950
    Estimate £350,000–550,000
    Bouquet d’œillets aux amoureux en vert dates from 1950, the year in which Marc Chagall first visited the peaceful Provençal town of Vence in the south of France. Throughout Chagall’s life, his work was a poetic metaphor for his turbulent life history, a balancing act which negotiated dream and reality harnessing an imagination that made the invisible visible. This work is a masterful and graceful composition comprising an array of symbolic motifs that concerned the artist throughout his œuvre, including an embracing couple enveloped by a lush bouquet of blooming carnations, a glowing crescent moon and a statuesque cockerel, boldly rendered in a vibrant royal blue. A vision drawn from the artist’s memory, the cockerel reflects his childhood experience in the small Russian village of Vitebsk, whilst the affectionate couple and depiction of Vence, with its recognisable church, reflect Chagall’s personal affiliations with his new home in France and the romantic relationships that defined his life.
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  • Odilon Redon, Vase de fleurs, circa 1905-08.
    Estimate £300,000–400,000
    Odilon Redon’s exquisite still-life compositions of floral arrangements constitute the hallmark of the artist’s œuvre. Blending dream and reality, Redon combined various bouquets, arranged by his wife, with the flora and fauna from fanciful gardens of his imagination. Eloquently marrying the traditional genre of still-life painting with his mystical 'noir' works, these dynamic floral compositions are testament to the artist’s unique ability to balance the ephemeral qualities of nature with the enduring power of imagination.
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  • Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, circa 1899.
    Estimate £400,000–600,000
    This spectacular view of Waterloo Bridge belongs to the iconic series that Claude Monet completed following his visits to London at the turn of the century. The whispering fog and ghostly silhouettes signal the beginning of the artist’s shift towards abstraction, forming the most meaningful transition between the Haystacks of the 1890s and the later Nymphéas. Taking in the view from what would have been his room at the Savoy Hotel, Waterloo Bridge looks south-east down the river. The artist delighted in the wide-ranging conditions of the banks along the Thames, varying from luminescent sunrises to the atmosphere of dense fog and industrial pollution caused by the smokestacks.
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  • Francis Picabia, Tabarin, circa 1937-38.
    Estimate £200,000–300,000
    The Bal Tabarin was the major cabaret rival of the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre where dancers performed the famous dance, the French Cancan. Tabarin is the very image of eroticism and frivolity at a time when the Montmartre cabarets were condemned by the Vichy regime. Picabia’s choice to capture this scene reflects the artist’s belief in freedom of expression and resonates with the Dada core aim of seeking to overthrow the art of the past and the notion that anything and everything could be considered art.
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  • Fernand Léger, Gif-sur-Yvette, 1954.
    Estimate £300,000–500,000
    Gif-sur-Yvette is a striking example of Fernand Léger’s bold use of colour and manipulation of form, which had reached a peak of creative assurance by the time the present work was painted in 1954. The title refers to a small suburb southwest of Paris, home to the National Centre for Scientific Research and the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Agency. While the composition is dominated by a still life of flowers in the foreground, the geometric forms of the background suggest the architecture of an industrial town.
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  • Yves Klein, Untitled Anthropometry (Ant 132), 1960.
    Estimate £6,000,000–8,000,000
    Dense in its conceptual framework and rare for its grand-scale and inclusion of two full figures, Untitled Anthropometry (ANT 132) represents a distillation of the central tenets of Yves Klein’s visionary oeuvre and exemplifies the mesmerising beauty of his Anthropometries.
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  • Francis Bacon, Turning Figure, 1963.
    Estimate £6,000,000–8,000,000
    Painted in early 1963, Turning Figure represents a milestone in Francis Bacon’s oeuvre, both for its position in the artist’s canon and for the quality of its execution. As with the very best of Bacon’s work, this painting forces the viewer to confront the unadorned truth of the artist’s principal subject: the human animal.
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  • David Hockney, The Splash, 1966.
    Estimate £20,000,000–30,000,000
    Undoubtedly one of the most iconic Pop art images of the 20th century, David Hockney's The Splash from 1966 is an irrefutably famous and undeniably rare painting of masterpiece calibre and mythic proportion. Alongside its sister painting A Bigger Splash, famously housed at Tate Britain, the present work encapsulates Hockney's spellbinding explorations into the blissful idyll of Southern California in the 1960s.
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  • Wayne Thiebaud, Fruit Stand, 1963.
    Estimate £800,000–1,200,000
    Executed in 1963, Fruit Stand is an early and brilliant example of Wayne Thiebaud’s painterly technique and formidable draughtsmanship. Characterised by a sense of desire and seduction, Fruit Stand offers a captivating exploration into the transient joys, delights and sentimentality of American life in the 1960s.
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  • Roy Lichtenstein, Grapes, 1974
    Estimate £1,500,000–2,000,000
    Executed in shades of black, white and Egyptian blue, Grapes is an outstanding example of Roy Lichtenstein’s exploration into the genre of still life, as well as his command of line, colour, concept and form. Highly idealised, visually arresting, and innately joyful, the present work delivers a succinct commentary on American consumerism in the 1970s.
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  • Morris Louis, Sidle, 1962.
    Estimate £400,000–600,000
    In Morris Louis’s Sidle, bands of colour cascade down the canvas in vertical stripes. Appearing to pulsate with energy, the work is charged with a vibrant and optic allure that encapsulates the American artist’s innovative practice.
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  • Bridget Riley, Shift, 1963
    Estimate £2,000,000–3,000,000
    With its mesmerising vortex of black and white triangular forms, Bridget Riley's Shift seems to twist and warp with spellbinding force. Highlighting the artist's status as a pioneer of Op art, this is an iconic example of Riley's 1960s oeuvre.
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