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Impressionist & Modern Art

Freud, Magritte and Picasso on view in LA in Stunning Highlights from Impressionist, Contemporary and Surrealist Sales

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This February, Sotheby’s Impressionist, Modern, Surrealist and Contemporary Art Sales present works by leading artists from the 19th and 20th centuries to today. Highlights include works by Lucian Freud, Egon Schiele and René Magritte.

Past Auction
Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
26 February 2019 | 7:00 PM GMT | London
Past Auction
Surrealist Art Evening Sale
26 February 2019 | 7:00 PM GMT | London
Past Auction
Contemporary Art Evening Auction
5 March 2019 | 7:00 PM GMT | London

Freud, Magritte and Picasso on view in LA in Stunning Highlights from Impressionist, Contemporary and Surrealist Sales

  • Property from an American Collection
    Egon Schiele, Triestiner Fischerboot (Trieste Fishing Boat), 1912
    Estimate £6,000,000–8,000,000
    'It is of the utmost necessity that you finally come to visit Trieste! […] I am currently sitting at the café of this new large hotel at the pier; it is teeming with noble, pure, luscious colors – tremendous!'

    Letter from Egon Schiele in Trieste to Anton Peschka in Vienna, May 1912
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  • Property from a Private European Collection
    Alberto Giacometti, Tête de femme (Annette), 1959
    Estimate £1,800,000–2,500,000
    Tête de femme (Annette) is a stunning composition emblematic of the haunting portraits that the artist produced in post-war Paris and captures a sentiment that he expressed in a Surrealist prose poem: ‘The human face is as strange to me as a countenance, which, the more one looks at it, the more it closes itself off and escapes by the steps of unknown stairways.’
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  • Lyonel Feininger, Brücke II (Bridge II) 1914-15
    Estimate £4,000,000–6,000,000
    One of Feininger’s most accomplished and striking oils painted in the cubist manner, Brücke II was inspired by a small Gothic bridge over the Ilm river near Weimar, a region that provided some of the most iconic motifs in his work. During this time Feininger was living in Berlin and often visited Weimar and this area – which he called ‘the promised land’ – offered the artist the tranquility and solitude in which he could focus on his painting.
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  • Property from a Private European Collection
    Alexej von Jawlensky, Stilleben mit Früchten, Figur und Flasche (Still-Life with Fruit, Figure and Bottle), 1907
    Estimate £800,000–1,200,000
    Painted in 1907, Stilleben mit Früchten, Figur und Flasche displays the vibrant palette that Jawlensky was formulating during the early years of Expressionism and that would eventually characterise his entire œuvre. Strongly reminiscent of numerous still-lifes by Paul Cézanne, the cloth in the centre bridges the gap between the space of the viewer and that of the painting, drawing one’s eye towards the centre of the canvas.
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  • Property of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, sold to benefit the acquisitions fund
    Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Mädchen auf dem Diwan (Girl on a Divan), 1906
    Estimate £2,800,000–3,800,000
    Painted during a pivotal year in Kirchner’s artistic development, Mädchen auf dem Diwan reflects the inspiration he found in the post-Impressionist painting by Van Gogh, while at the same time pointing to the highly innovative, expressive sensibility that would define the style of Kirchner’s mature art as well as that of Die Brücke.
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  • Property from a Private American Collection
    Egon Schiele, Sitzende, Rückenakt (Seated Nude, Back View), 1911
    Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
    Schiele’s drawings of women are rightly celebrated as among the twentieth century’s most powerful depictions of the human form. Sitzende, Rückenakt can be tentatively dated to the beginning of 1911; the bold tones of black, white and orange and the white gouache marking the outlines of the body are characteristic of Schiele’s work in 1910 and the first months of 1911 In Sitzende, Rückenakt Schiele depicts his model seated with her back to both artist and viewer. She is seen slightly from above – an approach that Schiele pioneered, often working from atop a ladder to achieve an unexpected and unconventional viewpoint.
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  • Max Ernst, La Horde,1927
    Estimate £400,000–600,000
    ‘Around 1926-27, Max Ernst – looking back at World War I, but also possibly looking ahead with a sense of premonition – confronted the inexplicable phenomena of his age, which he sought to visualize in the form of profound allegories.’

    Ioana Jimborean
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  • Property from an Important Private Collection, Belgium
    René Magritte, L'Etoile du matin, 1938
    Estimate £3,500,000–4,500,000
    L’Etoile du matin depicts a subject unique within Magritte’s œuvre. Inspired by a photograph that was supplied by his friend, the poet Marcel Mariën, it juxtaposes the profile of a Native American with that of his beloved wife Georgette. The painting was acquired shortly after its execution by a renowned Belgian couple who were close friends and patrons of Magritte, and has remained in the same collection to the present day.
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  • Property from a Private Collection, New York
    René Magritte, Les fenêtres de l'aube, 1928
    Estimate £400,000–600,000
    René Magritte’s Les fenêtres de l'aube is an intriguing depiction of trompe l'œil handkerchiefs inexplicably positioned above a pastoral landscape seen through a window or depicted in a postcard. The objects and landscape possess an enigmatic autonomy as they are suspended in space. An acute tension is created between the flat plane of the dark canvas and the deep space of the landscape and the apparent three-dimensionality of the handkerchiefs, emphasising the mystery that Magritte expertly conjures in his works.
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  • Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
    Pablo Picasso, Tête d’homme, 1969
    Estimate £350,000–450,000
    In Picasso’s late œuvre, the artist recurrently depicted himself in the guise of the virile and adventurous musketeer. Executed in passionately applied brush strokes, Tête d’homme is a triumphant representation of this celebrated theme, exhibiting Picasso’s talent for using iconography shared by Old Master painters but rendering it in a strikingly fresh and gestural way. The swashbuckling character of the musketeer leaps from the page of Alexandre Dumas’ novel into a new modern life on the canvas. The theme of the musketeer withholds personal qualities of the artist and was a last effort to reclaim a heroic stance in life, to affirm his ability, through skill and wit, and to ultimately remain in control of his fate during the final stage of his long life.
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  • Property from the Collection of Dr. Erika Pohl-Ströher
    Oskar Schlemmer, Tischgesellschaft (Group at Table)
    Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
    ‘My themes – the human figure in space, its moving and stationary functions, sitting, lying, walking, standing – are as simple as they are universally valid.’
    Oskar Schlemmer
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  • Property from a Private European Collection
    Marc Chagall, Le peintre à la fête
    Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
    At the centre of the composition, the image of the artist – brush in one hand and palette in the other – is surrounded by a joyful and colourful array of characters including a bride and groom, musicians, circus performers and cheering spectators. In Le peintre à la fête this self-reflective mood encompasses the many and varied influences on the artist’s work.
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  • Property from the Collection of the Hon. Garech Browne
    Lucian Freud, Head of a Boy, 1956
    Estimate £4,500,000–6,500,000
    Rendered with a captivating intensity and a remarkable tenderness, Lucian Freud’s mesmerising early portrait from 1956, Head of a Boy, embodies the sensational powers of observation which characterise the British painter’s work.
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  • Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
    Jean Dubuffet, Cortège Prime-Saute, 1965
    Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
    Executed within the last two decades of Jean Dubuffet’s life, Cortège prime-saute is a resplendent example of the French artist’s paradigm-shifting l’Hourloupe cycle.
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  • Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
    Jean Dubuffet, Les Alentours de Saint-Souris, 1949
    Estimate £1,800,000–2,500,000
    From Jean Dubuffet’s celebrated series of Paysages Grotesques, Les Alentours de Saint-Souris immerses the viewer in a transcendent realm of primitively etched figures and forms.
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  • Property from the Collection of Marc Jacobs
    Gerhard Richter, Säbelantilope, 1966
    Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
    Beautifully rendered in meticulous, monochromic sweeps of pigment, Säbelantilope exudes Gerhard Richter’s virtuosity with a brush and offers pure proof of the artist’s mastery of virtually all pictorial techniques across the span of his formidable career.
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