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Property from the Brooklyn Museum, Sold to Support Museum Collections
Sotheby's is pleased to announce that we will auction a selection of important works on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum across a series of sales in autumn of 2020, beginning with the marquee Contemporary and Impressionist & Modern Art evening auctions in New York this October.
T his autumn, Sotheby's will auction an important selection of works, including paintings by Claude Monet, Jean Dubuffet, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró and Henri Matisse, and design by Carlo Mollino, on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum.
The Museum's proceeds from Sotheby's sales will be used to establish a Collection Care Fund to support caring for the institution's world class collections. Creating a direct care fund will help offset the vastly growing expenses of collection care and stabilize collection care efforts in times of economic downturn. The Brooklyn Museum’s full direct care policy can be found at its website.
Sotheby's will auction additional works on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum across collecting categories throughout the autumn, including the Contemporary and Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sales in mid-November and a dedicated sale of Fabergé objects in November. Further details will be available in advance of each auction.
Sale Calendar
Contemporary Art Evening Auction, New York, 28 October, 2020
Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, New York, 28 October, 2020
Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, New York
A highlight of the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, Claude Monet’s Les Îles à Port-Villez, 1897 (estimate $2,500,000 – 3,500,000), comes from a group of six related canvases focusing on a cluster of tidal islands which formed where the Seine and Epte rivers meet, immediately south of Monet’s beloved Giverny. The painting showcases Monet’s sheer mastery of brush, paint and canvas, displayed at their most powerful and instantaneous. Evoking a moment of quiet along the banks of this mighty river, this painting captures the essence of Impressionism, some twenty-five years after Monet had first put a name to a nascent, rebellious movement with Impression, Sunrise.
Further auction highlights from the Brooklyn Museum include Joan Miró’s Couple d’amoureux dans la nuit, 1966 (estimate $1,200,000 – 1,800,000), and Edgar Degas's Femme nue assise s'essuyant les cheveux, circa 1902 (estimate $1,000,000 – 1,500,000).
Contemporary Art Evening Auction, New York
The Contemporary Art Evening Auction will offers two important paintings by Jean Dubuffet on behalf of the Museum, each estimated to achieve $2,500,000 – 3,500,000.
Dubuffet's Le Messager, 1961, presents one of the most accomplished personnages from the artist’s esteemed Paris Circus series. Having escaped the battered atmosphere of the post-war Paris in the mid-1950s, Dubuffet returned to find a city teeming with people, energy and color. Featuring a sensory overload of joyful colors and shapes, the present work bears witness to Dubuffet’s masterful handling of paint application and structural composition, as well as the joie de vivre of 1960s Paris.
Executed at the very peak of Jean Dubuffet's artistic prowess, Rue Tournique Bourlique, 1963, is brimming with a vibrancy that wholly exemplifies the compositional dynamism, painterly skill and imaginative enthusiasm that define the artist's highly esteemed L’Hourloupe cycle.
The Contemporary Art Evening Sale will also feature a historic masterpiece by Carlo Mollino – a highly important and unique Dining Table. This extraordinary work was created by Mollino in 1950 for the Brooklyn Museum’s seminal exhibition, Italy At Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today, which was organized as an international effort to showcase the breadth and ingenuity of contemporary Italian Design in the post-war reconstruction period. The Table stands as a masterwork that is as important historically as it is ambitious artistically, representing one of the most important singular works created by Mollino during his illustrious career. Transcending the definition of a utilitarian form, this Table is a tour-de-force in the technical ingenuity of its molded plywood technique and the synthesis of its organic and anthropomorphic formal qualities. The Table traveled to eleven different museum venues in 1950, and was gifted to the Brooklyn Museum by the Italian government at the end of the exhibition tour. Aside from its original international debut and select exhibition venues in recent years, this great icon has been largely unseen by the public for decades.
Sotheby’s will auction additional works on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum across collecting categories throughout the fall, including Contemporary and Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sales in mid-November and a dedicated sale of Fabergé objects in November. Further details will be available in advance of each auction.