Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

On November 11 and 12, Sotheby’s will offer an unprecedented line-up of celebrity portraits by Andy Warhol during its Contemporary Art sales in New York. Led by a luminous portrait of Elizabeth Taylor titled “Liz #3 (Early Colored Liz),” the lot includes paintings of Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Judy Garland, Debbie Harry, and the socialite São Schlumberger.

“Liz #3,” which presents the beguiling actress on a striking mint green background, has only been exhibited once since 1972.

Sotheby’s ten-day auction of the Collections of Andy Warhol in 1988 dispersed 179 watches the artist had owned. Some have resurfaced over the years and last year a Patek Philippe Ref. 2526 owned by the artist sold at Christie’s New York for $68,750, well above its $20,000‑30,000 estimate.

On November 11 Sotheby’s Geneva will be selling a Patek Philippe, Ref. 3448, made in 1977, and coming directly from the person who had bought it at the 1988 auction. The watch is estimated at $85,500‑128,000.

Sotheby’s announced that it will offer jewels from the collections of Mrs. Estée Lauder and Mrs. Evelyn H. Lauder as part of its Magnificent Jewels auction in New York on 9 December 2014. Thirty-three pieces from the collection of Evelyn H. Lauder will be sold to benefit The Breast Cancer Research Foundation®, an organization that she founded and championed, while 11 pieces from the collection of Estée Lauder will be sold to benefit the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation®. Sotheby’s previously auctioned jewels from the Collections in December 2012 and 2013 to benefit The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

The jewels on offer this December include designs by Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, David Webb, Buccellati, and Oscar Heyman & Brothers – one of Evelyn H. Lauder’s favorite New York jewelers – and are led by one of Cartier’s rare and iconic Tutti Frutti bracelets, made circa 1928 (est. $750,000 / 1 million).

A bitter dispute over a painting bought for £140 five decades ago reaches the High Court today – with some of the world’s most prominent Caravaggio experts lining up to take sides.

Sotheby’s is being sued over claims that it misattributed a work – The Cardsharps – to a follower of Caravaggio rather than the Italian painter himself, costing the seller millions of pounds.

The similarities between two art works being auctioned next month by Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York are striking. Both were created by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. And both once belonged to Fritz Grünbaum, a Viennese cabaret performer whose large art collection was inventoried by Nazi agents after he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died.

But there is also a notable difference in the way the houses are handling the sales.

A significant collection of works, never before on the market, by Man Ray will be offered at Sotheby's, Paris on 15 November. This will be the very last opportunity to acquire works by Man Ray coming directly from the studio of the artist, the artist’s estate. Following the first sale of works by Man Ray, coming from the studio of the artist held at Sotheby’s London in 1995, the auction will be the largest and most important sale of works by the ground-breaking artist in nearly 20 years.

As observed by Andrew Strauss, Vice-president of Sotheby’s France and leading authority on Man Ray: “Today’s auction presents a selection of the remaining significant works from the artist’s estate, many of which have never been seen previously.

Sotheby’s  “Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels” in Geneva will offer jewels with sought-after royal provenance along with other impressive gems such as a Kashmir sapphire weighing 27.54 carats (Est. $3.0-6.0 million) and the 8.62-carat “Graff Ruby” (Est. $6.8‑9.0 million), as well as exquisite vintage pieces by Cartier and Bulgari.

In total, the 470 assembled lots of the November 12 sale are expected to bring in excess of $62 million.

Nothing could be more tranquil than the woman in a shimmering painting by Claude Monet, forecast to set a new record for a portrait by the artist.

He captured Alice Hoschedé relaxing in a shady corner of his sunny French garden – but appearances were deceptive: in 1881 storm clouds were about to burst around the household.

The painting, "Alice Hoschedé au jardin," will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York in November, estimated at up to $35m (£22m).

New York and London gallery Skarstedt is off to a roaring start at Frieze Masters 2014, counting among its early sales Andy Warhol’s 1984 remix of Edvard Munch’s "The Scream," which sold to a private collector for about $5.5 million.

That sum pales in comparison to the $119.9 million Leon Black paid for Munch’s own version of "The Scream" at Sotheby’s back in 2012, which set the record at the time for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Before he became obsessed with Picasso and Braque, there were Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Back in elementary school, Leonard A. Lauder, the 81-year-old philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon, used to go to the movies at the Museum of Modern Art several times a week. Sometimes he would hang out in the galleries, too, soaking up the art. “I didn’t discover Cubism then,” he said. “But just by looking, you learn what’s good.”

Decades later, in 1976, on one of his regular visits to Sotheby’s, Mr. Lauder happened upon a Cubist drawing by Léger that he ended up buying.