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Impressionist & Modern Art

Masters of Modernism: Monet, Modigliani & Magritte Lead London Impressionist Sale

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Claude Monet's 1908 masterwork, Nymphéas, will lead the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 19 June accompanied by an outstanding 1918 portrait, Jeune homme assis, les mains croisees sur les genoux, by Amedeo Modigliani painted whilst the artist was living on the French Riviera. These mesmerising works are joined by other triumphs of painting and sculpture by artists such as Camille Pissarro, Henri Matisse and René Magritte. Click through to explore highlights from the auction.

Past Auction
Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
19 June 2019 | 7:00 PM BST | London

Masters of Modernism: Monet, Modigliani & Magritte Lead London Impressionist Sale

  • Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1908.
    Estimate £25,000,000–35,000,000.
    La Nouvelle Peinture: A Distinguished Family Collection

    "It took me some time to understand my water lilies. I planted them purely for pleasure; I grew them with no thought of painting them. […] And then, all at once I had the revelation – how wonderful my pond was – and reached for my palette. I’ve hardly had any other subject since that moment."
    —Claude Monet.
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  • Pablo Picasso, Homme à la pipe, 1968.
    Estimate £5,500,000–7,500,000.
    Property from a Distinguished Private Collection

    Conceived on a grand scale and painted with real energy and invention, Homme à la pipe [italics] is a striking example of the artist’s mature work. Painted in the autumn of 1968, the male figure, who is immediately recognisable as one of the musketeers that reappear throughout the paintings of this decade, is realised in quick, confident brushstrokes. The emphatic swirls of paint that fill the background contrast with the strong verticals of the pipe and chair, creating a powerful dynamic within the composition.
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  • Joan Miró, Peinture (L’Air), 1938. Estimate £10,000,000–15,000,000.
    Property from a European Private Collection

    Painted in 1938, Peinture (L’Air) is populated by playful creatures and animate shapes painted in bold primary tones and resonating with vibrant energy. The figures have been liberated from the oppressions of the terrestrial realm and given the freedom of the sky. Through the simplification of flat forms and the application of pure colours Peinture (L’Air) shows Miró moving in the direction of his celebrated series of Constellations, begun two years later in 1940.
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  • Camille Pissarro, Le Boulevard Montmartre, fin de journée, 1897.
    Estimate £3,500,000–5,000,000.
    Depicting the busy Parisian street with its pavement, buildings and trees bathed in a warm glow of the setting sun, Le Boulevard Montmartre, fin de journée is an outstanding work from one of the most important series of Pissarro’s urban views. The excitement and spectacle of the city at the fin-de-siècle is brilliantly evoked by the artist’s handling of paint and the elegant composition.
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  • Marc Chagall, La calèche volante, circa 1925.
    Estimate £2,000,000–3,000,000.
    Property from a Private Swiss collection

    Depicting a characteristic wooden house reminiscent of Chagall’s native Vitebsk, La calèche volante is a smaller version of a painting of the same title, now in the collection of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. A night-time scene suddenly flooded with bright light, this image has been linked to the sun god rising in his chariot, combining the everyday with the magical.
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  • René Magritte, La magie noire, 1946.
    Estimate £2,500,000–3,500,000.
    Property of a Private Collector

    La magie noire of 1946 is one of the purest and most elegant examples of the now-celebrated theme that preoccupied Magritte in the 1940s, that of a female nude in an unidentified landscape. The model for this series was the artist's wife Georgette Berger and her image is depicted in a classical manner, abiding by the laws of conventional beauty and proportion.
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  • Henri Matisse, Vase d'anémones, 1946.
    Estimate £4,000,000–6,000,000.
    Property from The Collection of Enrico Donati, New York

    Coming from the estate of the esteemed artist and collector Enrico Donati, Vase d'anémones is a vibrant example of Henri Matisse’s late still-life paintings. It reflects Donati’s sophistication of taste and his vision in the promotion of European Modern and Surrealist Art in 20th century America.
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  • Claude Monet, Printemps à Giverny, effet du matin, 1885.
    Estimate £4,000,000–6,000,000.
    La Nouvelle Peinture: A Distinguished Family Collection

    Printemps à Giverny, effet du matin was executed during a period when the astoundingly rich and diverse landscape surrounding Monet’s home became his primary motif. Having moved his large family to the rural hamlet of Giverny in the spring of 1883, the artist found here a retreat where he could dedicate himself to explorations of the natural world.
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  • Camille Pissarro, Les meules et le clocher de l'église à Eragny, 1884.
    Estimate £1,200,000–1,800,000.
    La Nouvelle Peinture: A Distinguished Family Collection

    Painted in 1884, Les meules et le clocher de l’église à Eragny is a beautifully rich and textured depiction of the landscape surrounding Pissarro’s home. Pissarro moved to Eragny with his family in the spring of 1884 and was to remain there until his death in 1903. Eragny was for the artist a pastoral idyll that provided copious painterly inspiration allowing Pissarro to eventually move away from his more Impressionist paintings and into the Neo-Impressionist works that dominated his art in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
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  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bouquet de roses dans un vase vert, circa 1912.
    Estimate £800,000–1,200,000.
    Property from a Private Collection

    “For an artist enamoured with color, flowers provide a perfect subject – infinitely varied, malleable to any arrangement. Several of Renoir's most beautiful paintings [...] are flower pieces. Renoir painted many pictures of flowers in addition to the more numerous figures and landscapes. Flowers appear frequently in his paintings as hat decorations or as part of the landscape behind figures even when they are not the main motif. Renoir himself said that when painting flowers he was able to paint more freely and boldly, without the mental effort he made with a model before him” (Renoir Retrospective, Nagoya City Art Museum, 1988, p. 247).
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  • Julio González, Tête au miroir.
    Estimate £800,000–1,200,000.
    Property from a Private Swiss Collection

    he late 1920s and early 1930s constitute the single most important period of González’s career and the years in which he crystallised the unique sculptural language that he would describe as ‘drawing in space’. The joy of the present work is in its remarkable simplicity; using only a few formal elements, González nonetheless succeeds in conjuring his subject – a full head of hair – in a work that exudes character and energy.
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  • Amedeo Modigliani, Jeune homme assis, les mains croisees sur les genoux, 1918. Estimate £16,000,000–24,000,000.
    Property from a Distinguished Private Collection

    A tender and transfixing image that beautifully exemplifies Modigliani's mature portraiture, Jeune homme assis, les mains croisees sur les genoux was painted while the artist was living on the French Riviera at the end of the First World War. A tender and transfixing image that beautifully exemplifies Modigliani’s mature portraiture, Jeune homme assis, les mains croisées sur les genoux was painted while the artist was living on the French Riviera at the end of the First World War.
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