Pablo Picasso, Oeufs, serviette roulée, courverts, 1924. Estimate $1,500,000–2,000,000.
Executed with an energetic intensity in pure colors and dramatic outlines, Oeufs, serviette roulée, courverts is an elegant example from a series of still lifes Picasso painted in the decade after World War I. Throughout his long career, Picasso experimented with the still life endlessly, the quotidian subject matter and ease of composition making it a natural vehicle for the artist’s boundless creative instincts.
Henry Moore, Four Piece Reclining Figure, 1972. Estimate $1,000,000–1,500,000.
Four Piece Reclining Figure is an extraordinary example of Moore's agility at representing three-dimensional form. The sculpture consists of four separate pieces that comprise a grand structure of compelling beauty. By separating these forms, Moore permits the viewer to consider the spatial depth of his work and the relationship between the solids and voids of the sculpture.
Fernand Léger, Nature morte aux fruits sur fond bleu, 1939. Estimate $1,800,000–2,500,000.
In Nature morte aux fruits sur fond bleu, images of fruits and branches are entangled with overlapping abstract forms, all painted in strong, unmodulated color and silhouetted against the flat background. Rather than depicting a narrative or imitating nature, Léger was concerned with the primacy of painting and explored the very language of painting in its fullest and purest form, namely the elements of color and form.
Raoul Dufy, Les Voiliers à Deauville. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
Les Voiliers à Deauville conveys a sense of stillness in the midst of a frenetic scene, in which the lines of opposing objects intersect and create a cohesive landscape where the sea is associated more with commerce than nature. The present work is a departure from more Fauve depictions of ships in Dufy’s early paintings.
Henri Martin, Cinq pécheurs et leur barque échouée sur la grève à Collioure, circa 1930. Estimate $300,000–400,000.
After settling in Collioure, the chosen resort town of the Fauves and Neo-Impressioinsts, Martin created some of his most richly saturated paintings. Cinq pécheurs et leur barque échouée sur la grève à Collioure is an excellent example of the artist’s oeuvre, demonstrating Martin’s quick application of vibrant paint with the small, distinct brushstrokes of his pointillist technique.
Amedeo Modigliani, Tête profil gauche. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
Distilling the profile of a woman to its most fundamental geometric forms, Tête profil gauche is representative of Modigliani’s exhaustive pursuit of pure artistic fulfilment. Although deeply indebted to art’s classical Western tradition, Modigliani’s oeuvre was nevertheless rooted in the ancient traditions of Egypt, West Africa and the Khmer Empire. A master painter, draftsman and sculptor, Modigliani’s prolific drawing output elucidates his restless search to synthesize these varied visual influences.
Pierre Bonnard, La Sieste au jardin, circa 1900. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
La Sieste au jardin is likely a depiction of a sleepy summer day at Bonnard’s country home of Le Clos in Le Grand-Lemps where his family and friends would commune. Bonnard employs loose brushwork to add texture to the landscape, blending the human and natural elements seamlessly, presenting an aura of idle serenity.
Émile Bernard, Bretonnes ramassant des pommes, 1889. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
Painted at the innovative height of the Pont-Aven School in 1889, Bretonnes ramassant des pommes is undoubtedly one of the most iconic works in the oeuvre of Émile Bernard. The convergence of ravishing colors, flattened perspective and pastoral subject matter embodies the new Post-Impressionist vocabulary that Bernard and other artists of the Pont-Aven colony sought to create, underscoring a striking contrast from the modern bustle of a rapidly industrializing Paris.
Paul Sérusier, Deux bretonnes au bord de l'Aulne, 1897. Estimate $300,000–500,000.
Painted in 1897, Deux bretonnes au bord de l’Aulne is an exemplary work from Sérusier's Breton output. The work depicts two young peasant women at the edge of the winding river Aulne, just below Châteauneuf-du-Faou, the town where Sérusier lived from 1894 until his death in 1927. Sérusier’s anonymous female subjects, whom he painted frequently throughout his time at Pont-Aven, are expressed here within a relatively simplified palette and outlined forms.
Odilon Redon, Vase de fleurs, 1905-08. Estimate $700,000–1,000,000.
Odilon Redon’s gorgeous still lifes are the hallmark of the artist’s oeuvre. Vase de fleurs serves as a prime example of this defining motif while representing a groundbreaking shift in Redon’s work in terms of both medium and subject matter. These still lifes are a combination of the imaginary and the real, and attest to the artist’s unique ability to balance the ephemeral quality of nature’s beauty with the enduring power of imagination.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Bar-maid, 1898. Estimate $500,000–700,000.
Bar-maid is an exceptional example of the artist’s portraiture, reflecting Lautrec’s fundamental ability to express the emotional and psychological tensions of human relations. Bar-maid captures an archetypal figure in Lautrec’s world, traced in light strokes of pastel.
Paul Cézanne, Le Restaurant Mistral à l'Estaque, circa 1870. Estimate $200,000–300,000.
Le Restaurant Mistral à l’Estaque is an exceptionally rare example of Cézanne’s earliest forays into gouache and watercolor which he produced around this time. These small-scale landscapes are remarkable for the insights they provide into Cézanne’s rejection of the traditional understanding of this medium.
Édouard Manet, Jeune fille au col cassé, de profil, circa 1880. Estimate $700,000–1,000,000.
Jeune fille au col cassé, de profil exemplifies the breezy elegance and ephemeral atmosphere Manet creates in his pastel portraits. The spirited technique in the application of the pastel contributes to the air of spontaneity and the intimacy of the present work.
Berthe Morisot, Alice Gamby dans le salon, 1890. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
Berthe Morisot is known for her portraiture depicting young women with delicate features and flowing garments. The hurried quality of the brushstrokes of Alice Gamby dans le salon speaks to Morisot’s mastery of the Impressionist aesthetic. The painting is an impressive example of Morisot’s command of thoughtfully depicting both the figure and compositional space.
Diego Rivera, Retrato de Guadalupe “Pico” Rivera Marin, 1925-26. Estimate $500,000–600,000.
Painted in 1925-26, Rivera’s tender portrait of his eldest daughter Guadalupe “Pico” Marín offers a synthesis of the plastic ideas he explored in Europe with the revolutionary social realist vocabulary of his murals. Here, Rivera’s geometric sensibility and light, gauzy brushwork imbue the work with a luminosity and tenderness rarely seen in his oeuvre.
Marc Chagall, Coq et femme à l'éventail, circa 1978. Estimate $700,000–1,000,000.
Coq et femme à l’éventail showcases Chagall’s mastery in assembling an array of folkloric images in a dense and colorful composition. This work contains several of the most crucial elements in the artist’s pictorial iconography, including the violinist, the dancing peasant, and the goat, which evoke the villages of his childhood home in Russia.
Travelling the world as collectors and connoisseurs for more than five decades, Joe and Teresa Long assembled a remarkable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works as well as nineteenth and twentieth century portraiture, landscape and genre paintings from European, American and Latin American artists. Ranging from Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec to Odilon Redon and Diego Rivera, the collection demonstrates their impeccable eye and their passion for the arts.