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Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, 1907, is among highlights on offer tonight at Christie’s, but a different-flavor Monet is among the best lots at Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on May 7. Sur la falaise à Pourville, 1882, a pristine, unlined canvas offering a stunning seaside view, comes from the series of cliffwalk paintings the artist made in Normandy. It is being deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it has resided since 1956. It was bequeathed from the collection of Julia Emmons, whose father, Arthur Emmons, acquired the painting in 1907 from Durand-Ruel, Monet’s primary-market dealer. The provenance trail for the work, which carries an estimate of $5 million to $7 million, is impeccable. Also historically significant, the painting was part of a select group of French Impressionist pictures exhibited in New York at the National Academy of Design in 1886, believed to be the first time such foreign fare was shown in the United States.
Moving into the modern realm, Henri Matisse’s La séance du matin, 1924, depicts the artist’s key model and studio assistant, Henriette Darricarrère, seated in a striped yellow dress and painting in Matisse’s light-filled studio in Nice. “It’s the best Nice picture that’s been on the market in a long time,” says Simon Shaw, worldwide co-head of the Impressionist and modern department at Sotheby’s. It is estimated at $20 million to $30 million. Matisse, who taught Darricarrère to paint, executed another version, known as The Three O’Clock Sitting, 1924, which is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
From a bit later in the 20th century, Picasso’s large-scale narrative from a celebrated series, Le sauvetage, 1932, features characters engaged in a carefree game of beach-ball as a drowning girl is being rescued. It was inspired by a witnessing of similar events by Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s young lover and muse. The picture is estimated at $14 million to $18 million—an attractive range, considering it last sold in May 2004 at Sotheby’s New York for $14,792,000.
Topping the sculpture entries is Giacometti’s masterful lifetime bronze, La place, 1948, estimated at $12 million to $18 million, which features five of his gaunt figures hurriedly crossing a square. The work hails from the esteemed Chicago collection of Morton G. Neumann, and last sold in May 2000 at Sotheby’s New York for $4,515,750.
A version of this article appears in the May 2014 issue of Art+Auction magazine.
