Stories

One of the painter's last monumental triptychs comes to the block from a Swiss collection. Christie’s announced overnight that it would be selling Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1986-87 estimated at £35,000,000 ($47.3 million).

Sotheby’s has unveiled another Claude Monet work for the March 2nd sale in London. The late waterlilies work from 1914-1917 was purchased by Sotheby’s former owner Alfred Taubman in 1978 before he owned the auction house.

Painting sold to fund collector’s emigration to New York is offered with £35m estimate in March and hopes for much more. The market for works of German Expressionism is hampered by the limited supply of works in private hands and the relative paucity of trades that might excite both buyers and sellers.

Lucien Freud’s Girl with Closed Eyes, a portrait of Janey Longman painted by Freud in his sixties, will be offered during Christie’s March 1st relay sale connecting sale rooms in Shanghai and London. The work is being offered with its estimate upon request, a strategy that allows the house to gauge demand for the work in real time, but the whisper number places expectations above £10 million for the small canvas.

On March 1st, Christie’s will resume its relay sales with an event linking the firm’s Shanghai headquarters with London selling works in the 20/21 format with the addition of a traditional London sale focused around the Art of Surrealism.

Five works by Claude Monet are coming to Sotheby’s for their Modern and Contemporary Evening auction in London March 2nd. With the dad-joke title of Monet x Monet | A Distinguished American Collection, the works have a combined estimate around $40 million (£30m).

Among René Magritte’s many famous images expressing the uncanniness of modern life, none is as recognizable as his composition titled L’empire des lumières, of which he made 17 different versions beginning in 1948.