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Sotheby’s New York Sydell Miller Collection

November 19, 2024
A Monet water lily painting

Nymphéas by Claude Monet

The November sales at the New York auction houses kicked off on Monday at Sotheby’s with the evening sale featuring the collection of Sydell Miller. Having made a name for herself in the hair care business, Miller passed away at age 86 this past March. On Monday, November 18th, the highlights of her art collection were the first to cross the block.

Of course, the collection’s star was the Claude Monet water lily painting. The bidding started at $40 million and quickly reached $50 million within the first two minutes. Things slowed down once it got to $55 million, with fourteen minutes elapsing between the $50 million bid and the winning bid. Auctioneer Oliver Barker referred to it as “one of the most important works from Monet’s water lily series to be offered at auction this century”. He later referred to it as “this ravishing thing”, and at the $58.5 million mark described the moment as “once in a generation”. I couldn’t help but laugh when he said that because it seems like a Monet water lily painting such as this, from his later life with a stamped signature, comes to auction about once or twice every year rather than once in every generation. But still, the hammer came down at $59 million (or $65.5 million w/p), slightly under the $60 million pre-sale estimate. The painting is now in the top ten most valuable works by Monet ever sold at auction, just squeezing by the painting of Waterloo Bridge sold for $64.5 million w/p at Christie’s New York in November 2022 as part of the Paul Allen collection.

A Picasso painting of a woman sitting in front of a marble bust.

La Statuaire by Pablo Picasso

A little later on came the sole Picasso painting of the collection. La Statuaire dates to 1925, having last sold at auction at Sotheby’s in 1999 for $11.8 million w/p. Picasso gives us a blend of cubism with a touch of neoclassicism, showing a woman seated beside a bust before a set of open French doors. According to Sotheby’s specialists, the painting represented further progression in Picasso’s development as an artist, or “the multifaceted modes of Picasso’s artistic expression.” Galerie Paul Rosenberg was the first to own the painting before moving around several different private and public collections, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It was one of the paintings selected for Picasso’s first American exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1934. Bidding started at $15 million and climbed steadily to $20 million within 30 seconds. After about three minutes of bidding, the Picasso was sold for $22 million (or $24.8 million w/p), quite a bit less than the $30 million Sotheby’s expected.

In between the Monet and the Picasso came another one of the predicted top lots. Wassily Kandinsky’s 1921 painting Weisses Oval has an illustrious provenance. Between 1945 and 1971, it was part of the collection at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. After going to auction at Sotheby’s, it passed through a few collections before ending up at Thomas Ammann Fine Art in Zürich, having bought it jointly with Galerie Beyeler and Carlo Bilotti. Miller acquired the painting from Landau Fine Art in Montreal in 2000. Weisses Oval is also important from an art-historical perspective since it is one of the last paintings Kandinsky created before he moved from Russia to Berlin, marking his further departure from trends in the Russian avant-garde art movement and solidifying his own conceptions of form and color. Bidding began at $12.5 million, climbing steadily before the hammer came down at $19.1 million (or $21.6 million w/p), on the higher side of its $15 million to $20 million pre-sale estimate range.

An abstract painting of various shapes and colors converging into one.

Weisses Oval by Wassily Kandinsky

With these incredibly expensive collections full of blue-chip artists, there are not often many surprises. However, the first lot of the night seemed to have been an indicator of the collection’s later success; an Edgar Degas bronze ballerina sculpture, entitled Grande arabesque, troisième temps. Degas designed the bronze no later than 1895, with this particular piece cast in 1919, a couple of years after the artist’s death. It last sold at Sotheby’s London in December 1986 for £220K w/p (or about $315.5K w/p at the time). Sotheby’s specialists gave it an estimate range of $400K to $600K. When Oliver Barker brought down the hammer at $1.4 million (or $1.68 million w/p), the room erupted with applause, knowing it would be an interesting evening. Thirteen of the twenty-five lots were statues and sculptures by various artists, including Claude Lalanne, Joan Miró, and Henry Moore.

Overall, the evening sale was successful. Eight of the twenty-five available lots sold within their estimates, giving Sotheby’s a 32% accuracy rate. The same number of lots (32%) sold above their estimates, while nine (36%) sold below. In total, Sotheby’s brought in $189.54 million (or $215.95 million w/p) against a total minimum pre-sale estimate of $169.5 million.

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