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RENE MAGRITTE (1898-1967)
L’empire des lumières
oil on canvas
19 1/8 x 23 1/8 in. (48.5 x 58.7 cm.)
Painted in 1949
$25 – 35 million
Christie’s has announced L’empire des lumières by René Magritte will be a leading highlight in Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale taking place on November 9, 2023 during the New York Marquee Week of sales. The work is the first of 17 oil paintings that was completed by the artist in this iconic, all-important series. Nelson A. Rockefeller was the first private owner of the work who acquired it the year following its completion while serving as chairman and president of Chase National Bank in Rockefeller Center. This fall, the work will travel to Taiwan before returning to Rockefeller Center prior to the sale, where it is estimated to achieve $25 million – 35 million.
Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks, “In 1949, Magritte embarked on the series of 17 paintings that would define him. Formerly in the collections of Nelson Rockefeller and Daniel Filipacchi, L’empire des lumières introduced this now-iconic series to the world and broke the record for any work by Magritte in its only appearance at auction. We are deeply honored to offer this historic masterpiece in November.”
L’empire des lumières is an immediately recognizable work from Magritte’s singular oeuvre. Translated to “the dominion of light” the work is a sublime example of the finest of the artist’s surrealist compositions. Filled with a rich sense of mystery that confounds and beguiles, it presents a seemingly impossible collision of day and night in a single moment. In the 15 year period from 1949 to 1964, Magritte created in total 17 oil paintings of this series, with ten more in gouache. The present oil painting is the first canvas the artist completed, though not the first that he began. The 16 additional oils completed over the next 14 years, all slight variants based on the conception of the simultaneity of night and day, were made for interested collectors in response to the present example’s extreme popularity.
As Magritte explained, the power of works such as L’empire des lumières lay in transforming the familiar, everyday world in unexpected ways. Executed with a precision and attention to detail that only reinforces the uncanniness of the scene, the L’empire des lumières paintings offer an elegant summation of Magritte’s unique form of Surrealism, reveling in a game of unexpected contradictions, in which all is familiar and yet ultimately strange, and the ordinary is rendered extraordinary.
Christie’s has announced L’empire des lumières by René Magritte will be a leading highlight in Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale taking place on November 9, 2023 during the New York Marquee Week of sales. The work is the first of 17 oil paintings that was completed by the artist in this iconic, all-important series. Nelson A. Rockefeller was the first private owner of the work who acquired it the year following its completion while serving as chairman and president of Chase National Bank in Rockefeller Center. This fall, the work will travel to Taiwan before returning to Rockefeller Center prior to the sale, where it is estimated to achieve $25 million – 35 million.
Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks, “In 1949, Magritte embarked on the series of 17 paintings that would define him. Formerly in the collections of Nelson Rockefeller and Daniel Filipacchi, L’empire des lumières introduced this now-iconic series to the world and broke the record for any work by Magritte in its only appearance at auction. We are deeply honored to offer this historic masterpiece in November.”
L’empire des lumières is an immediately recognizable work from Magritte’s singular oeuvre. Translated to “the dominion of light” the work is a sublime example of the finest of the artist’s surrealist compositions. Filled with a rich sense of mystery that confounds and beguiles, it presents a seemingly impossible collision of day and night in a single moment. In the 15 year period from 1949 to 1964, Magritte created in total 17 oil paintings of this series, with ten more in gouache. The present oil painting is the first canvas the artist completed, though not the first that he began. The 16 additional oils completed over the next 14 years, all slight variants based on the conception of the simultaneity of night and day, were made for interested collectors in response to the present example’s extreme popularity.
As Magritte explained, the power of works such as L’empire des lumières lay in transforming the familiar, everyday world in unexpected ways. Executed with a precision and attention to detail that only reinforces the uncanniness of the scene, the L’empire des lumières paintings offer an elegant summation of Magritte’s unique form of Surrealism, reveling in a game of unexpected contradictions, in which all is familiar and yet ultimately strange, and the ordinary is rendered extraordinary.
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Sixteen Jackies
silkscreen ink on linen, in sixteen parts
Painted in 1964.
Estimate: $25,000,000-35,000,000
NEW YORK – Christie’s is pleased to announce Sixteen Jackies by Andy Warhol will be featured as a leading highlight in the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place on November 9, 2023. This 1964 painting depicts a 4x4 grid of a repeated press image of First Lady Jackie Kennedy taken during her husband’s funeral procession. The work will come to auction a week and a half shy of the day marking the 60th year anniversary of JFK’s death. A seminal work by the 20th century icon, Sixteen Jackies sits at the pinnacle of the group of artworks that became known as his Death and Disaster paintings. It is estimated to achieve $25 million - $35 million.
Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks: “Sixteen Jackies captures the enormity of one of the most defining moments in American history in a uniquely Warholian way. Through the convention of reproduction, he transforms the personal grief of Jackie Kennedy into social commentary about collective trauma. This is a formal meditation on tragedy through the lens of mass media and a distillation of beauty, celebrity, shock, and sadness. Warhol's influence and impact on the contemporary landscape has continued to grow posthumously; this work stands as a testament to his enduring brilliance."
November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade in Texas, sitting aside his wife, Jackie. In the moments and days immediately following, hundreds of photographers documented Jackie’s every move. Thousands of snapshots were taken, transferred into print and digital images, and splashed across the media in its all forms—newspaper front pages and broadcast television.
Of the photographs taken of Jackie Kennedy during this time, Warhol selected just eight as the basis for the Jackie series. The image chosen for Sixteen Jackies is among the most powerful. It was taken as she walked at the head of the funeral procession that accompanied her husband’s body through the streets of Washington toward Arlington Cemetery, his final resting place. In this tightly cropped image of her face, Warhol ensures that our attention is focused solely on her grief. The shared sense of emotional trauma is further heightened through Warhol’s use of repetition. Through using the same image over and over again—much in the same way it was broadcast over and over again on TV and plastered across the front page of every newspaper—Warhol essentially sears Jackie’s likeness onto the world’s collective retina. The combination of stoicism, grace, and sorrow within this picture connotes not only Jackie’s emotional pain, but her incredible strength as a survivor.
This work, assembled in this arrangement by Warhol himself, is the only work from the series that repeats the same image in a 4x4 grid. Unlike the other five paintings which feature sixteen images of Jackie, this is the sole work executed in a single color palette—notably mirroring the black-and-white colorway of a newspaper. Warhol’s reaction to the death of JFK is veiled with levels of complexity reflected in the paintings it inspired. In the coming years, the implication of media as it effected perception would come to be a defining characteristic in his practice.
Sixteen Jackies is representative of the finest of Warhol and a standout from his Death and Disaster series, notably accounting for the most sought after works by the artist—including three of his top five auction prices of all time.
NEW YORK – Christie’s is pleased to announce Sixteen Jackies by Andy Warhol will be featured as a leading highlight in the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place on November 9, 2023. This 1964 painting depicts a 4x4 grid of a repeated press image of First Lady Jackie Kennedy taken during her husband’s funeral procession. The work will come to auction a week and a half shy of the day marking the 60th year anniversary of JFK’s death. A seminal work by the 20th century icon, Sixteen Jackies sits at the pinnacle of the group of artworks that became known as his Death and Disaster paintings. It is estimated to achieve $25 million - $35 million.
Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks: “Sixteen Jackies captures the enormity of one of the most defining moments in American history in a uniquely Warholian way. Through the convention of reproduction, he transforms the personal grief of Jackie Kennedy into social commentary about collective trauma. This is a formal meditation on tragedy through the lens of mass media and a distillation of beauty, celebrity, shock, and sadness. Warhol's influence and impact on the contemporary landscape has continued to grow posthumously; this work stands as a testament to his enduring brilliance."
November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade in Texas, sitting aside his wife, Jackie. In the moments and days immediately following, hundreds of photographers documented Jackie’s every move. Thousands of snapshots were taken, transferred into print and digital images, and splashed across the media in its all forms—newspaper front pages and broadcast television.
Of the photographs taken of Jackie Kennedy during this time, Warhol selected just eight as the basis for the Jackie series. The image chosen for Sixteen Jackies is among the most powerful. It was taken as she walked at the head of the funeral procession that accompanied her husband’s body through the streets of Washington toward Arlington Cemetery, his final resting place. In this tightly cropped image of her face, Warhol ensures that our attention is focused solely on her grief. The shared sense of emotional trauma is further heightened through Warhol’s use of repetition. Through using the same image over and over again—much in the same way it was broadcast over and over again on TV and plastered across the front page of every newspaper—Warhol essentially sears Jackie’s likeness onto the world’s collective retina. The combination of stoicism, grace, and sorrow within this picture connotes not only Jackie’s emotional pain, but her incredible strength as a survivor.
This work, assembled in this arrangement by Warhol himself, is the only work from the series that repeats the same image in a 4x4 grid. Unlike the other five paintings which feature sixteen images of Jackie, this is the sole work executed in a single color palette—notably mirroring the black-and-white colorway of a newspaper. Warhol’s reaction to the death of JFK is veiled with levels of complexity reflected in the paintings it inspired. In the coming years, the implication of media as it effected perception would come to be a defining characteristic in his practice.
Sixteen Jackies is representative of the finest of Warhol and a standout from his Death and Disaster series, notably accounting for the most sought after works by the artist—including three of his top five auction prices of all time.
RICHARD DIEBENKORN (1922-1993)
Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad
oil on canvas
Painted in 1965.
Estimate on Request
NEW YORK – Christie’s is thrilled to announce Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, the seminal 1965 masterwork by Richard Diebenkorn, will be among the leading highlights in the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 9, 2023. This painting, which heralds the artist’s iconic Ocean Park series, is estimated in excess of $25 million and is poised to reset Diebenkorn’s record at auction.
Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks: “Diebenkorn once told Wayne Thiebaud that in his painting he was trying to work out ‘a combining’ of Matisse and Mondrian. Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, which commemorates his visit to the Soviet Union in 1964 and the ideals of cultural exchange, represents the triumph of this vision. Its breathtaking color is worthy of Matisse. Its forms build upon the striking asymmetries of Mondrian. It is the ultimate hinge masterpiece.”
Sara Friedlander, Christie’s Deputy Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarks: “Richard Diebenkorn and his wife Phyllis traveled to the Soviet Union in the beginning of Fall 1964. It was their first time leaving the United States. This lifechanging voyage was thanks to the diplomacy seeking efforts by President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev who organized an exchange program for artists. During the course of the tour, Diebenkorn saw dozens of works by Matisse, one of the most important artistic influences in the life and career of the California-based artist. Diebenkorn was deeply moved by the Matisse paintings he encountered—he had previously seen them only in his books. This trip marks a turning point in the artist’s artistic practice. Returning home, his work began to shift away from figuration, a dominate characteristic of his previous work. He embarked on what would become a lifelong pursuit into the exploration of abstraction.”
Richard Grant, Diebenkorn Foundation Executive Director, remarks: “To me, this work appears to be the quintessential beginning of Ocean Park.”
Based on the west coast, Diebenkorn was a singular figure in his generation, with an oeuvre that evolved seemingly in diametric opposition to the formal trends favored by his contemporaries. His dedication to his own instincts and artistic sensibilities—regardless of stylistic fads—remains one of his defining characteristics. Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad is a superb example. It is simultaneously demonstrative of his intense gratitude for a masterful Impressionist artist whom he so deeply admired and representative of a profound and intimate moment, pivotal in the arc of his life’s work. In the same private collection since 1969, the work has only had only one owner. The work was featured as the cover of the exhibition catalogue for the highly lauded Matisse/Diebenkorn exhibition, held at The Baltimore Museum of Art October 2016 – January 2017 and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art March – May 2017.
NEW YORK – Christie’s is thrilled to announce Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, the seminal 1965 masterwork by Richard Diebenkorn, will be among the leading highlights in the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 9, 2023. This painting, which heralds the artist’s iconic Ocean Park series, is estimated in excess of $25 million and is poised to reset Diebenkorn’s record at auction.
Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks: “Diebenkorn once told Wayne Thiebaud that in his painting he was trying to work out ‘a combining’ of Matisse and Mondrian. Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, which commemorates his visit to the Soviet Union in 1964 and the ideals of cultural exchange, represents the triumph of this vision. Its breathtaking color is worthy of Matisse. Its forms build upon the striking asymmetries of Mondrian. It is the ultimate hinge masterpiece.”
Sara Friedlander, Christie’s Deputy Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarks: “Richard Diebenkorn and his wife Phyllis traveled to the Soviet Union in the beginning of Fall 1964. It was their first time leaving the United States. This lifechanging voyage was thanks to the diplomacy seeking efforts by President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev who organized an exchange program for artists. During the course of the tour, Diebenkorn saw dozens of works by Matisse, one of the most important artistic influences in the life and career of the California-based artist. Diebenkorn was deeply moved by the Matisse paintings he encountered—he had previously seen them only in his books. This trip marks a turning point in the artist’s artistic practice. Returning home, his work began to shift away from figuration, a dominate characteristic of his previous work. He embarked on what would become a lifelong pursuit into the exploration of abstraction.”
Richard Grant, Diebenkorn Foundation Executive Director, remarks: “To me, this work appears to be the quintessential beginning of Ocean Park.”
Based on the west coast, Diebenkorn was a singular figure in his generation, with an oeuvre that evolved seemingly in diametric opposition to the formal trends favored by his contemporaries. His dedication to his own instincts and artistic sensibilities—regardless of stylistic fads—remains one of his defining characteristics. Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad is a superb example. It is simultaneously demonstrative of his intense gratitude for a masterful Impressionist artist whom he so deeply admired and representative of a profound and intimate moment, pivotal in the arc of his life’s work. In the same private collection since 1969, the work has only had only one owner. The work was featured as the cover of the exhibition catalogue for the highly lauded Matisse/Diebenkorn exhibition, held at The Baltimore Museum of Art October 2016 – January 2017 and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art March – May 2017.
PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT NEW YORK COLLECTION
JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992)
Untitled
oil on canvas
Painted circa 1959.
Estimate: $25,000,000-35,000,000
Christie’s is thrilled to announce Joan Mitchell’s Untitled will be a leading highlight in the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place live on November 9, 2023 at the auction house’s Rockefeller Center saleroom. A seminal masterpiece by a pioneering figure of Abstract Expressionism, the work is estimated to achieve $25 million - $35 million—one of the highest auction estimates in history for a female artist, and the highest ever for a female Abstract Expressionist. It is poised to establish a new artist record.
Sara Friedlander, Deputy Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie's, remarks, “In the tradition of storied painters such as Sofonisba Anguissola and Artemisia Gentileschi, Joan Mitchell had to fight for the recognition that she was due as a female artist in a male-dominated industry. She succeeded with her forceful yet lyrical form of gestural abstraction grounded in memories and feelings of the natural world. Brimming with lush, unfettered hues, Untitled stands as a best-in-class example, declarative of Mitchell’s deep understanding of color and demonstrative of the fearlessness with which she wielded her brush. We are honored to be offering this painting as a highlight in our 20th Century Evening Sale
Joan Mitchell painted with an athletic sensibility. Using the full reach of her arms and often standing on tiptoe, she approached her canvases with a relentless determination. The towering scale of her paintings was matched by the limitless scale of her ambition. Bolstered by the mounting critical and commercial success of her paintings including Ladybug (1957, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Hemlock (1956, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), by 1959 Mitchell had established herself amongst the vanguard of New York’s Abstract Expressionist elite, and as the 1950s progressed, her visual vocabulary became more assertive and sophisticated, distinguishing from her contemporaries for her singular style that melds bravura with grace. In 1959, Mitchell traded the gritty downtown scene in New York for an older, richer tradition in France, moving to Paris permanently and joining a thriving intellectual and artistic community. It was at this time that she was at her creative, commercial and critical peak.
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PAUL SIGNAC (1863-1935)
Portrieux, Tertre Denis (Opus no. 189)
Oil on canvas
Painted in June-September 1888
Estimate: $15,000,000-25,000,000
NEW YORK - Christie’s is pleased to announce the Phillips Family Collection which will highlight the Fall Marquee Week of Sales in New York City this November. The collection of more than 20 artworks will be sold across the 20th Century Evening Sale and the Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sales, with a low estimate in excess of $25 million. Headlined by Paul Signac’s exquisite canvas Tertre Denis, Portrieux, Opus 189 to be presented in the 20th Century Evening Sale, this group represents exceptional examples by Impressionist and post-Impressionist masters such as Matisse, Pissarro, Bonnard, Seurat and Sisley and others.
Adrien Meyer, Christie’s Global Head-Private Sales & Co-Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, remarks, “The Phillips Family Collection was built with a discerning eye over 50 years ago by two brothers, Ivan and Neil Phillips. Together, the pair of connoisseurs assembled a masterful group of Impressionist and Old Master paintings admired over decades by the finest museum curators. It is an honor to offer the Highlights from the Phillips Family Collection this November at Christie’s New York.”
Collecting for the Phillips was a true family affair. The Honorable Lazarus Phillips Q.C.O.B.E and Rosalie Phillips began acquiring French Impressionist and early 20th century French art, amassing a superb collection that would come to be maintained by their sons Ivan and Neil Phillips. In the early 1950s, the brothers’ deep interest in art and art history further blossomed, and they became heavily involved in the evolution, development, and maintenance of the Phillips Family Collection. Expertly assembled with passion and care, the collection is a survey of many of the greatest names across both the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist categories.
The top lot of the group to be sold this November is Paul Signac’s Tertre Denis, Portrieux, Opus 189, painted in the summer of 1888 in the fishing village of Portrieux. During this all-important summer, Signac created a highly celebrated series of nine oil paintings and six studies focused on port scenes and seascapes, each of which uniquely captures the dramatic colors and scintillating light of Portrieux’s rich landscape. This group stands among the most consistently pointilliste of Signac’s divisionist canvases, reflecting the growing sophistication of his technique during this time, as his creative collaboration with friend and mentor Georges Seurat reached new heights.
NEW YORK - Christie’s is pleased to announce the Phillips Family Collection which will highlight the Fall Marquee Week of Sales in New York City this November. The collection of more than 20 artworks will be sold across the 20th Century Evening Sale and the Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sales, with a low estimate in excess of $25 million. Headlined by Paul Signac’s exquisite canvas Tertre Denis, Portrieux, Opus 189 to be presented in the 20th Century Evening Sale, this group represents exceptional examples by Impressionist and post-Impressionist masters such as Matisse, Pissarro, Bonnard, Seurat and Sisley and others.
Adrien Meyer, Christie’s Global Head-Private Sales & Co-Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, remarks, “The Phillips Family Collection was built with a discerning eye over 50 years ago by two brothers, Ivan and Neil Phillips. Together, the pair of connoisseurs assembled a masterful group of Impressionist and Old Master paintings admired over decades by the finest museum curators. It is an honor to offer the Highlights from the Phillips Family Collection this November at Christie’s New York.”
Collecting for the Phillips was a true family affair. The Honorable Lazarus Phillips Q.C.O.B.E and Rosalie Phillips began acquiring French Impressionist and early 20th century French art, amassing a superb collection that would come to be maintained by their sons Ivan and Neil Phillips. In the early 1950s, the brothers’ deep interest in art and art history further blossomed, and they became heavily involved in the evolution, development, and maintenance of the Phillips Family Collection. Expertly assembled with passion and care, the collection is a survey of many of the greatest names across both the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist categories.
The top lot of the group to be sold this November is Paul Signac’s Tertre Denis, Portrieux, Opus 189, painted in the summer of 1888 in the fishing village of Portrieux. During this all-important summer, Signac created a highly celebrated series of nine oil paintings and six studies focused on port scenes and seascapes, each of which uniquely captures the dramatic colors and scintillating light of Portrieux’s rich landscape. This group stands among the most consistently pointilliste of Signac’s divisionist canvases, reflecting the growing sophistication of his technique during this time, as his creative collaboration with friend and mentor Georges Seurat reached new heights.
A majestic tour-de-force teeming with fierce, muscular brushstrokes and a kaleidoscopic display of the most powerful colors in her arsenal, Joan Mitchell’s ‘Untitled,’ circa 1959, boasts all of the hallmarks of her most celebrated pictures, making it a true masterpiece from the most pivotal and exciting decades of her career. The painting employs Mitchell’s signature linear elements known as “whiplash” strokes, infusing the canvas with a frenetic sensibility. Through the course of the 1950s, these linear elements proliferated and multiplied, resulting in a veritable explosion, a harmonious cacophony of color, texture and form.
A majestic tour-de-force teeming with fierce, muscular brushstrokes and a kaleidoscopic display of the most powerful colors in her arsenal, Joan Mitchell’s ‘Untitled,’ circa 1959, boasts all of the hallmarks of her most celebrated pictures, making it a true masterpiece from the most pivotal and exciting decades of her career. The painting employs Mitchell’s signature linear elements known as “whiplash” strokes, infusing the canvas with a frenetic sensibility. Through the course of the 1950s, these linear elements proliferated and multiplied, resulting in a veritable explosion, a harmonious cacophony of color, texture and form.