newsfromsothebys201011

Amedeo MODIGLIANI (1884-1920)
Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine), 1917
Signed Modigliani (lower right)
Oil on canvas, 100x65cm

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$68,962,500 (£42,961,936) (€49,105,649) (Sotheby's NY, November 2st 2010, Lot 7)
Estimate Upon Request (In excess of US$40 million)
Lot Sold. Anonymous

***RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION***

Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine) exemplifies Modigliani's conquest of the nude, a subject that is considered his greatest accomplishment in painting. Continuing the tradition of Botticelli's Venus, Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, Ingres' Baigneuse turque and Manet's Olympia, it ranks among the definitive nudes in the history of Western art.

Few pictures explore the pleasures of the flesh with such candor, intimacy and immediate appeal. Modigliani believed that "to paint a woman is to possess her."Indeed, her availability to engage with us is undeniable, with her rosy thigh projecting into the foreground. The tilt of her head, piled with lustrous black hair, the strained exposure of the neck, the arch of her brow and the glint in her eyes all accentuate the full complicitness of this woman in the art of seduction. Captivating the imagination with her sensual appeal, La Belle Romaine is nothing less than a goddess of the modern era. [...]

Property from a Private European Collection (acquired at Sotheby's, New York, November 11, 1999, Lot 125, from a Private Collection, Asia)
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$16,777,500 (Estimate US$12,000,000-16,000,000)

Claude MONET (1840-1926)
Le Bassin aux Nymphéas, 1917-19
Stamped with the signature twice on the reverse
Oil on canvas, 97.5x198.4cm

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$24,722.500 (£15,401,508) (€17,603,979) (Sotheby's NY, November 2st 2010, Lot 13)
Estimate US$20,000,000-30,000,000
Lot Sold Private American Collector

The water lily pond was the defining motif of the last two-and-a-half decades of Monet's life. How this beautiful and visually dynamic subject came to be the focus of Monet's artistic output can be traced back to 1883, when the artist moved to Giverny, where he rented a house with a large garden. Thanks to his ever-increasing financial success, he was able to buy the property outright in the early 1890s and eventually purchased a large adjacent plot of land. It was here in 1893 that he began to construct his famous water gardens and lily pond, fed by water from a nearby river. During 1901-02, Monet enlarged the pond, replanted the edges with bamboo, rhododendron, Japanese apple and cherry trees. Towards the end of his life, he told a visitor to his studio "It took me some time to understand my water lilies. I planted them purely for pleasure; I grew them with no thought of painting them. A landscape takes more than a day to get under your skin. And then, all at once, I had the revelation - how wonderful my pond was - and reached for my palette. I've hardly had any other subject since that moment" (as cited in Stephan Koja, Claude Monet, Österreichische Galerie-Belvedere, Vienna, 1996, p. 146). [...]

Property sold to benefit Yougarts, the core program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (acquired at Sotheby's, New York, November 16, 1998, Lot 10, from The Reader's Digest Collection, Pleasantville, New York)
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$9,902.500 (Estimate US$9,000,000-12,000,000)

Henri MATISSE (1869-1954)
Danseuse dans le fauteuil, sol en damier, August 16th-20th, 1942
Signed H. Matisse (lower left)
Oil on canvas, 46x55cm

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium US$20,802.500 (£12,959,444) (€14,812,692) (Sotheby's NY, November 2st 2010, Lot 24)
Estimate US$12,000,000-18,000,000
Lot Sold Anonymous

Danseuse dans le fauteuil, sol en damier brilliantly exemplifies what Matisse called "the colour of ideas." This visually arresting canvas marked the begining of a revolutionary campaign in Matisse's art in the fall of 1942, when he would eliminate extraneous details that characterized his depictions of Odalisqes in the 1920s. Instead, he turned his focus more exclusively towards the essential components of form and color. The present work encapsulates this new direction of his art, with its sharp tonal color contrasts and confident, linear clarity. "I will now begin to paint with the same ardour as I have drawn," Matisse proclaimed in 1942, and surely this canvas has much of the same vigour and spontaneity of his drawings (quoted in Matisse, A Second Life (exhibition catalogue), Musée Luxembourg, 2005, p. 108). Matisse's highly stylized portrayal of the sensuous model ensconced in a plush armchair makes no attempt at anatomical naturalism, prefacing the linear simplicity of the colorful cut-outs that would dominate his art in years to come. [...]

Property from a Private European Collection (acquired at Sotheby's, London, June 19, 2007, Lot 15)
Lot Sold Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium £10,996,000 (Estimate £8,000,000-12,000,000)