Sotheby’s has unveiled four paintings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, all from the same private collection, that will take center stage at the house’s upcoming Impressionist and modern art sale on May 12 in New York. Together, the works are expected to fetch a collected price of $45 million.
Leading the group is Cézanne’s Nature morte: pommes et poires, which carries an estimate of $25 million–$35 million. It is an example of one of Cézanne’s mature still lifes of apples painted in the 1880s and 1890s. The work has remained in the same private collection for almost two decades years.
The seller purchased it for $8.7 million at a Sotheby’s New York Impressionist and modern art evening sale in November 2003. Prior to that, it belonged to American publisher and French art collector Alex Hillman and his wife Rita.
Edgar Degas’s pastel drawing of a ballerina, Danseuse (ca. 1890s), will also be offered. The subject of the work is believed to be Parisian dancer Marie van Goethem, whose image Degas recreated in his bronze sculpture Little Fourteen-Year Old Dancer. For 70 years, the pastel work was in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is estimated at $10 million-$15 million.
Monet’s river scene La Seine à Lavacourt Débâcle (1880), which was once owned by industrialist George Vanderbilt II and hung at the Biltmore estate, is expected to sell for $6 million–$8 million. Another painting by Monet, a rare floral still-life titled Fleurs dans un pot (Roses et brouillard), 1880, is expected to fetch $4 million. Like the other works in the collection, it, too, boasts an impressive provenance. It was once owned by American collectors Odgen Phipps and James F. Sutton, the founder of the American Art Association.