Christie’s Adds $130M Fall Auction
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A splashy Morris Louis painting that once brightened a living room in Connecticut could find a new home at a $130 million Christie’s International auction on November 5, a day before its big-ticket Impressionist and Modern art sale.
The newly added auction includes 60 lots from the estates of a pair of wealthy New York-area widows, Rita Hillman and Alice Lawrence. The sale is stocked with blue-chip work from Mark Rothko, Édouard Manet, René Magritte, and Paul Cézanne.
Christie’s said an early estimate for the two-day tally is $300 million, a figure that is likely to increase as the auction house adds artworks to the sale. The estimate is down from $395 million a year ago.
“This is what the market wants,” a private dealer, Franck Giraud, said. “These are the most desirable kinds of pictures — significant examples put together a long time ago.”
Hillman, who died last year at 95, bought art with her late publisher husband, Alex Hillman. A major philanthropist, in 1989 Hillman sold a Picasso, “Mother and Child,” for $18.7 million at Sotheby’s in New York, donating the proceeds to a nursing education program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Hillman was president of the Alex Hillman Family Foundation, which had assets of $103 million, according to a 2006 tax filing, $74 million of which was listed as paintings and sculptures. In 2006, the foundation donated $1.7 million to arts- and nursing-related charities. Most of the proceeds from the Christie’s sale will go to the foundation.
The sale’s first 30 lots are Hillman’s collection, estimated to total up to $87 million. Top works include Manet’s 1880 “Fillette sur un banc,” of a young girl in a large hat, estimated to sell for up to $18 million. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s 1897 “Portrait de Henri Nocq,” of an artist friend standing in Lautrec’s studio, is estimated at up to $8 million.
Lawrence, who died last February at 82, preferred a more Modernist aesthetic. Her custom-built Rafael Viñoly home in Ridgefield, Conn., was artfully arranged with a dark velvety 1950 Rothko in the entrance, “No. 43 (Mauve),” now tagged to fetch up to $30 million. The colorful 1959-60 Morris Louis in the living room is estimated to bring up to $3 million.
Lawrence’s portion of the November 5 sale is estimated to sell for between $44 million and $66 million.
