NEW YORK, 3 November 2017 – Sotheby’s is pleased to unveil highlights from its upcoming Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art, which opens for public exhibition this Friday in New York. The 14 November auction is led by two of Claude Monet’s signature landscape paintings, Les Glaçons, Bennecourt and Les Arceaux de roses, Giverny (estimates $18/25 million, respectively), as well as Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme au chapeau – a canvas referencing two of his greatest muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar (estimate $18/25 million).

Sotheby’s marquee fall auctions of Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art will be on public view in our York Avenue beginning today, 3 November.

CLAUDE MONET FROM WINTER TO SUMMERAmong Monet’s most celebrated and visually spectacular canvases are his depictions of ice on the Seine. These majestic paintings exemplify the artist’s talent for capturing the nuances of the natural world in flux, and Les Glaçons, Bennecourt is among the most elegant (estimate $18/25 million). The work is further distinguished by its important early provenance: its first private owner was Louisine Havemeyer, the art collector and philanthropist, who acquired the picture from Galerie Montaignac in 1897 - a mere four years after it was painted. Together with her husband, Henry Osborne, Louisine amassed what was perhaps the finest art collection in America.

Dazzling in its use of color and exploration of the properties of reflection, Les Arceaux de roses, Giverny is one of only five canvases painted by Claude Monet between the summer of 1912 and 1914 (estimate $18/25 million). Three of these paintings, including the present work, focus on trellises covered in roses, set on the boat landing on the south side of Monet’s water garden. The present work is a stunning symphony of richly applied and worked pigment, and by far the most energetic in the series.

Following Sotheby’s record-breaking auctions of The Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon in 2014, we are once again honored to present fine art acquired over a lifetime by this legendary tastemaker. The group is led by Monet's Champ d’iris à Giverny, painted in 1887 during a period of respite from the artist’s extensive travels in Holland, Brittany and, finally, his newly-established permanent studio at Giverny (estimate $3/5 million). The work was acquired by the Mellons in 1953 and has remained in the family’s collection since. Separate release available.

POWERFUL PICASSO PAINTINGSThe Evening Sale will offer 11 works by Pablo Picasso, led by Buste de femme au chapeau from 1939 (estimate $18/25 million). Characterized by its vibrant color palette, sharp angularity and bold form, the work is a salient example of the Madonna-and-Magdalene dichotomy that manifested in Picasso’s work while he was simultaneously involved with two of his greatest muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. The daring oil painting, which remained in Picasso’s personal collection until his death and was subsequently inherited by his daughter Maya Picasso, before entering its current collection, is now being sold to benefit charitable organizations including the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Separate release available

The monumental Homme assis au casque et à l'épée is a powerful example of a theme that was central to Picasso in the last years of his life (estimate $8/12 million). The work was painted in Picasso’s most prolific year, 1969, during which he seemed to not at all be affected by his advanced age but rather invigorated that he had more and more to paint. Towards the end of his life, the image of the musketeer evoked Picasso’s Spanish heritage and his nostalgia for the youthful vigor of his early years.

MARC CHAGALL’S MONUMENTAL CANVASESThe November evening sale boasts two important canvases by Marc Chagall, led by his lyrical masterpiece Les Amoureux (estimate $12/18 million). A stunning image of the artist’s two great loves – his childhood sweetheart and muse, Bella Rosenfeld, and his adoptive home of France – Les Amoureux encapsulates the best characteristics of Chagall’s oeuvre. The work has remained in the same family collection for nearly 90 years, having been purchased from legendary Parisian gallery Bernheim-Jeune in October of 1928 – the year it was painted. Separate release available.

Ever since his childhood, when he had seen the acrobats in the streets of the Russian town of Vitebsk where he lived with his family, Chagall was fascinated by the theme of the circus, and often returned to this subject-matter in his oeuvre. The arrival of the circus signified the sudden invasion of the wondrous in to the rhythm of everyday life, the transformation of the humdrum into a form of art that left behind a lingering sensation of happiness and amazement. Measuring ten feet across, Le Grand Cirque from 1956 is a monumental manifestation of this central theme for the artist (estimate $10/15 million).

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF BARBARA & MARTIN ZWEIGPaul Cézanne’s Nature morte (estimate $7/10 million) – one the artist’s iconic still lifes – leads an exquisite group of high Impressionist and post-Impressionist works from the Collection of Barbara and Martin Zweig. The most fully-worked still life by the artist to appear at auction since Sotheby’s 2013 sale of the Lewyt Collection, Nature morte encapsulates Cézanne’s artistic achievement, and displays the brilliance and economy which characterize his best work.

Assembled by the Zweigs in the 1990s, the collection offers works that are both exquisite and fresh to the market, by some of the greatest French artists of the turn of the 20th Century, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Manet. The Evening Sale will offer eight works from the collection, together expected to achieve in excess of $20 million. Separate release available.

A SURREALIST SCENE BY RENÉ MAGRITTELe Banquet is one of René Magritte's most daring and inventive Surrealist landscapes (estimate $12/18 million). Depicting a forest at sunset, with the bright red sun pasted onto the trees, Le Banquet is a large-scale, magnificent example of two key elements of Magritte’s art: the influence of papiers collés on his painterly technique, and the juxtaposition of the visible and the invisible. The brightly colored and sharply defined image of the setting sun, which would normally be hidden behind the trees, evokes the paper cut-outs that Magritte first developed in his early drawings and papiers collés of the 1920s.

MAGNIFICENT GESTURES: MASTERWORKS FROM THE DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL COLLECTIONSotheby’s is honored to offer masterworks on paper from the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection as a highlight of our November sales of Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art. Dr. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and Ambassador Carl Spielvogel have meticulously built an unprecedented collection of drawings and works on paper that offers unique insight into the creative spirit and personality of an impressive array of artists working across the 20th and 21st centuries. Full proceeds from the sale of works from the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection will benefit a charitable foundation of the same name, which was established to support causes that the Spielvogels have actively championed throughout their lives. Separate release available.

The 14 November auction offers works from the collection by René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Paul Klee and Georges Braque. The selection is led by Magritte’s entrancing La Réponse imprévu – a masterful celebration of the medium in which the artist achieves a level of detail only available to him on paper, and compounds these striking characteristics (estimate $2/3 million). The work employs one of Magritte's most enigmatic tropes of the door, capturing the ‘treachery of images’ for which the artist is well-known: here the door fails to serve its purpose of closing off the space, opening to a world that cannot quite be seen or understood. La Réponse imprévu relates to an important oil painting of the same name in the collection of the Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

AUCTION HIGHLIGHTSFurther highlights of the Evening Sale include Georges Braque’s Le Pyrogène et le quotidien Gil Blas – an early Cubist canvas, which has remained in the same family collection since it was acquired directly from the artist’s dealer (estimate $2.5/3.5 million). The painting is the first work by either Braque or Pablo Picasso to incorporate lettering into its composition – a symbol that would become a recognized attribute of the Cubist movement.

Yellow Sweet Peas by Georgia O’Keeffe – on offer from the Family Collection of Paul G. Allen – is a sensuous meditation on form and design that reveals her mastery of the pastel medium, and marks the artist’s first appearance in this auction (estimate $2.5/$3.5 million).

Painted in 1892, at the height of his artistic production, Théo van Rysselberghe’s Port de Cette, Les Tartanes (estimate $6/8 million) is a dazzling example of the artist’s mastery of the pointilliste technique. One of his most acknowledged masterpieces, the canvas has been included in several major Neo-Impressionist exhibitions, and was part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Élément méchanique sur fond jaune (construction métallique) represents the culmination of Fernand Léger’s ode to the modern working man (estimate $2.5/3.5 million). Painted in 1950, following his return to France at the end of World War II, the work exemplifies Léger’s predilection for mechanical and technological subject matter, which led the artist to produce Les Constructeurs – one of his most acclaimed series of paintings that were produced concurrently with the present work. Extraordinary in its use of color, the painting monumentalizes aspects of every-day life, which would later inspire the first generation of Pop artists, including Roy Lichtenstein.