Getting in Gear: Christo, Van Gogh and Winston Churchill

Christo and Jean-Claude’s art collection was auctioned with great success, and Christie’s is launching its 20^th Century month with several sales not to be missed.

Christo, The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris, 1985. Courtesy of Sotheby's

The auction calendar for the year is beginning to take shape as Christie’s is gearing up to launch what it now calls an entire month of 20^th Century sales. The flagship sales will take place towards the end of the month, but already on March 1 the first auctions featuring important works will come under the hammer. The final lot list for the marquee sales is still in the works, however, and we can expect to meet many a headline in the art press over the next month about another masterpiece being announced.

Sotheby’s, too, has scheduled its main auction (“cross-category” is its terminology) for late March, and already published 14 of the upcoming lots, which we shall of course go into as the sales approach. Ahead of the March forecast, however, it is worth to catch a glimpse of last week’s Paris-based sale Unwrapped, Part I: The Hidden World of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. As the title implies the Sotheby’s auction was dedicated to the collection of the late Bulgarian artist Christo, who died in May 2020, and his wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009. The couple’s large-scale installation, especially the wrapping of landmarks, conquered all corners of the world, and their long-term project of wrapping the Parisian Arc de Triomphe, the planning of which effectively started in 1961, will be realized posthumously in the second half of this year.

Christo, The Umbrellas (Joint project for Japan and USA), 1991. Both courtesy of Sotheby's

The beloved couple’s art collection was met with great interest, its providence proving to be especially incentivizing. Of the 29 planned lots, one was withdrawn but all the others sold – 24 above estimate, some at a multiple, and only one below estimate – resulting in a total of $8.9 million, more than double the sale’s high estimate. The unusual offering further underlined Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s high esteem in the market, as sketches, or drafts of their projects were especially sought after, claiming the top spots of the sale and establishing new Christo records and several more top rankings.

Two drafts of the same large-scale 1991-project, The Umbrellas (Joint project for Japan and USA), sold for $1.9 million, almost six times its high estimate, and $1.35 million, over four times its high estimate, respectively, the former showing the (1760) yellow umbrellas that were installed overnight in California, the latter the (1340) blue umbrellas on the banks of the Sato River in Japan. Another work of the same type was The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris, which sold $522,650, almost $200,000 above estimate.

Andy Warhol’s Jackie, assumed to be the most expensive lot ahead of the sale, sold for just over $1 million, within estimate, the same figure as Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Attesa, which albeit was estimated at half the amount. The collection’s sale was completed on February 18, with the online offering of 331 lots in Part II bringing in another $1.3 million.

Vincent van Gogh, La Mousmé, 1888. Courtesy of Christie's

Christie’s will hold three sales on March 1-2, with an overall estimate of $40.7 million. Opening directly with the most important one in New York, A Family Collection: Works on Paper, Van Gogh to Freud, the live stream will immediately be followed with Modern British Art Evening Sale in London, and the Modern British Art Day Sale will go through the following day. The highlight, of course, is Vincent van Gogh’s drawing from 1888, La Mousmé. The drawing, considered one of the most important ones by the Dutch painter, is not a sketch for the oil painting of the same name, but was drawn after the completion of the former, and was described by the artist himself as containing more ‘clarity of touch,’ than the painting. The drawing, which could become Vang Gogh’s most expensive work on paper (current record: $10.3 million), is estimated to sell between $7 million and $10 million.

Lucian Freud, Self-portrait, 1974. Courtesy of Christie's

Only seven other works are part of that sale. Both René Magritte’s Journal intime – an astonishing gouache rendering of two urbanite men who turned to stone on a similarly rocky platform surrounded by a vast landscape – and Georges Seurat’s La voile blanche – a somber but nuanced conté crayon drawing depicting two Parisian ladies on the edge of a river – are expected to fetch $2.5 million - $3.5 million, while the immensely expressive and skilled application of watercolors in Lucian Freud’s Self-portrait is aiming for $1.8 million - $2.5 million. Henry Moore, Henri Matisse, Jean-Louis Forain and Augustus Edwin John make up the rest of the roster.

Sir Winston Churchill, Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, 1943. Courtesy of Christie's

Headlining the subsequent Modern British Art Evening Sale will Winston Churchill’s Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, which boasts a provenance that reaches far beyond art history. It is the only painting that the legendary British statesman created during WWII, at a critical moment in the war’s progression, when he and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid down their future strategy, overlooking the depicted view over Marrakech, Morocco. Churchill then gifted the work to Roosevelt, whose son inherited it from him and later sold it to a filmmaker. It was acquired by Brad Pitt in 2011 as a gift for his then-wife Angelina Jolie, who is selling the painting now for an estimated price of $1.5 million - $2.5 million.

Besides another two paintings by Churchill, four Henry Moore sculptures are among the 34 lots to be offered, as well as two Barbara Hepworths and six works by Laurence Stephen Lowry. The latter will also be featured with 23 lots in the Modern British Art Day Sale on March 2.

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