Art News

Auctioneer Antoine Petit spotted Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s "Philosopher Reading"—which, on June 26, 2021, sold for £6.6 million ($9.2 million)—during a standard estate inventory of a Parisian apartment.

Later this month, Sotheby’s will offer five exceptionally rare CryptoPunks. Of the 10,000 Cryptopunks created, only twenty-four were issued in physical form, as certified prints signed by co-creator John Watkinson.

Discover an exceptional group of works by Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Odilon Redon in this episode of Expert Voices. From an esteemed private collection and fresh to the market, these five works look beyond Impressionism and convey the uniquely sensitive vision of each artist. The group features two exquisite pastels by Degas, ‘Le bain’ and ‘Femme à sa toilette’, two fine examples of Renoir’s late portraiture, ‘Femme à la rose’ and ‘La bohémienne’, and a rare Symbolist work by Redon, ‘Profil bleu’.

In a time when the passion of the crowd has been so sadly missing at sporting events, the pre-match sense of energy and excitement in L.S. Lowry’s ‘Going to the Match’ is more palpable than ever. Painted in 1928, this is one of Lowry’s earliest depictions of crowds thronging to a sporting occasion. That it was a Rugby League match he chose to paint first shows just how deeply entrenched the sport was in the social and cultural fabric of northern England.

The last 200 years of Russian Art is a true reflection of what was happening in Russia both socially and politically. In this latest episode of Expert Voices, Sotheby’s specialist Reto Barmettler talks about the changes that Russia endured between the 19th and 20th century. Discover how Sotheby’s upcoming Russian Pictures auction (2- 8 June) reflects the breadth of what Russian art has to offer, from 19th century landscapes by Shchedrin and Aivazovsky, post-revolutionary works by Malevich and Puni, Gerasimov’s Soviet era paintings, and more contemporary artworks by Ilya Kabakov and Ivan Chuikov.

Husband and wife artists Kahn and Mason’s private art collection reflects and celebrates their relationships with other artists, and represents the ‘relationships, themes and eras’ of the second half of the 20th century. American artists Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason carved out intensely singular paths with their art — and yet they were never alone.

Sotheby’s blended in-person and digital experiences to execute three sales on the evening of May 12 with stunning results including the five-person bid over a star piece, Claude Monet’s Le Bassin aux nymphéas.

The still-life is star for Paul Cézanne, who, while not the first artist to paint a still life, was the first to elevate everyday objects to be the primary subject. Nature morte; pommes et poires, was made in the late 1880s at the height of the artist’s career, when he was living in Provence and creating his most celebrated works. Simple in composition and striking in its modernity, this painting is a beautiful and exciting example of Cezanne doing what he did best– exalting the quotidian and giving the world a new way to examine the natural world.

Ahead of New York’s upcoming Contemporary Art Evening auction, Grégoire Billault, Head of New York’s Contemporary Art Department, and David Galperin, Head of New York’s Contemporary Art Evening Sales, come together to discuss a highlight of the marquee event: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Versus Medici. Painted in 1982, when the artist was just 22 years old, Versus Medici is among Basquiat’s most forceful visual challenges to the Western art establishment.

One of the finest large-scale Water Lilies paintings by Claude Monet will star in Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 12 May in New York. Ground-breaking in its nearly abstract treatment of the pond water’s surface, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas (1917-1919) is a powerful testament to Monet’s creativity in his mature years and represents an important bridge between Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism.