A HIGHLIGHT OF THE
20TH / 21ST CENTURY: LONDON EVENING SALE
David Hockney, California (1965, Estimate on request: in the region of £16,000,000)
Christie’s will offer David Hockney’s masterpiece, California (1965, Estimate on request: in the region of £16,000,000) as a highlight of the 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale on 7 March. Held in the same European private collection since 1968, the painting stands among Hockney’s first great swimming pool paintings and has been unseen in public for more than 40 years.
California was acquired by the present owner in 1968. The painting was unveiled in London on 25 January ahead of a touring exhibition schedule that includes Paris from 3 to 8 February and New York from 15 to 19 February. California will then be on view in London at Christie’s global headquarters on King Street from 1 to 7 March. California is the largest and finest in the extraordinary group of early pool paintings created in London after Hockney’s first visit to Los Angeles in 1964. The art historians Paul Melia and Ulrich Luckhardt have noted that ‘Hockney considers it to be one of his most important pool paintings’. The paintings that followed have come to be synonymous with his oeuvre, combining dazzling technical virtuosity with strains of fantasy, desire and longing.
Katharine Arnold, Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Europe: “David Hockney’s pool paintings have become some of the most iconic and loved images of our time. California is an exceptional painting made shortly after Hockney’s first trip to Los Angeles in 1964 where he marvelled at the brilliant light and mosaic-like cityscape populated by bright blue swimming pools. After a childhood brought up in the north of England, and having studied in London, still reeling from the Second World War, California must have felt like Arcadia; a beautiful place to be free and enjoy being young. This sense of the artist’s optimism and jubilation is in the very fabric of Hockney’s California. Owned by a private European collector since 1968 and last seen in public in 1979, this painting is sensational and follows in the footsteps of Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which achieved a world record at Christie’s in 2018.”
Joseph Braka, Junior Specialist, Post-War and Contemporary Art, London: “As one of David Hockney’s first of a series of now fabled pool paintings, California stands as one of the most important pictures of the artist’s career. Executed on a grand scale, with dynamic line and vibrant colour, the painting vividly conveys the wide-eyed exhilaration of a young Englishman plunged into a social revolution sweeping the West Coast of America. Through a body of tangled lines and cells, emblematic of his early style before his move towards naturalism, Hockney masterfully captures the elusive and ever-changing properties of water and light.”
A halcyon vista of carefree summer bliss, California is among Hockney’s earliest iterations of the swimming pool motif and was one of the first pool paintings to include figures. While Hockney incorporated a swimming pool in the 1964 painting California Art Collector, it was not until he returned to London for Christmas that year that he made his first full pool painting: a figureless composition entitled Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool (1964). California followed shortly afterwards, along with the closely related painting Two Boys in a Pool, Hollywood (1965). California anticipates many of the achievements that followed in Hockney’s subsequent masterpieces. Its kaleidoscopic depiction of moving water lays the foundations for the techniques explored in A Bigger Splash (1967, Tate, London) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). Its naked figures foreshadow the sensuous male nudes of Sunbather (1966, Museum Ludwig, Cologne) and Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). So essential did Hockney consider the painting to his oeuvre that, when unable to include it in his 1988 retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he made his own copy, now held in the museum’s permanent collection.
Faced with depicting the elusive, ever-changing properties of water and light, a theme which lies at the heart of Hockney's practice, he made his first great forays into the themes of vision and perception that would come to define his work. California’s stylised vocabulary of tangled lines and cells is particularly distinctive of this early period, predating the artist’s turn towards naturalism and his landmark double portraits made during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Christie’s will offer Claude Monet’s Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897, estimate: £12,000,000-18,000,000) at auction for the first time in 45 years. A leading highlight of the 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale on 7 March, this magnificent painting captures a tranquil moment on the Seine, the morning light casting an iridescent glow across the scene. Matinée sur la Seine, temps net dates to an important period in Monet’s practice during which time he began to serialise his motifs, a technique that would ultimately transform his art. Last seen at exhibition in 1990 when it was included in ‘Monet in the ‘90s: The Series Paintings’ (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago and Royal Academy of Arts, London), Matinée sur la Seine, temps net will be displayed at Christie’s in New York from 9 to 14 February and in Hong Kong from 21 to 23 February. The view in London will take place at King Street from 1 to 7 March.
The series to which the painting belongs, titled ‘Matinées sur la Seine’, conveys the landscape during the summer mornings of 1896 and 1897 as the light transforms the atmosphere. Tracing the sun as it passes over the scene, from the first rays of light at dawn, to the full brilliance of the sun at mid-morning, this extraordinary sequence of works was conceived as a connected, interrelated sequence of canvases. These would become some of the last scenes the artist would create of the Seine, a frequent subject in his oeuvre and one of the defining images of the Impressionist movement.
Michelle McMullan, Co-Head of 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale, Christie’s: “We are thrilled to offer Matinée sur la Seine, temps net in London, a masterpiece by Claude Monet, in the year that marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Impressionism. The painting is a poetic meditation on time that places equal significance on both the ‘real world’ of the pictorial sky and its mirror image reflected in the water. In the morning mist, these two realms meld together, focusing the viewer on the sensation of the scene unfolding before them. Following the sale of Monet’s Le bassin aux nymphéas in New York in November of 2023, we look forward to presenting Matinée sur la Seine, temps net to our international clients, who we are confident will be enthralled by the mesmeric beauty of one of Monet’s most cherished subjects.”
The idea of serialisation first occurred to Monet when he was painting a church in the misty sunlight. While he often painted several versions of the same scene, it was not until he completed his depictions of the Creuse valley in 1889, an example of which will also be offered in the Evening sale on 7 March, that Monet returned to the creative possibilities the serial technique offered. Time was deeply embedded in the process and presentation of the ‘Matinée sur la Seine’ with each painting depicting a specific instant. To capture the sun’s first rays illuminating a small inlet on the Seine, Monet would set out at 3:30am, remaining on the river until the light no longer suited his purpose. Monet would work on many canvases at the same time, slotted into different grooves that lined his bateau-atelier. As the light changed during the course of the morning, he quickly switched from one canvas to the next. It is possible to track the rising sun across the canvases when seen as a group.
Monet explained, ‘I am pursuing the impossible. Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat… I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible’.
Giovanna Bertazzoni, Vice Chairman, 20th / 21st Century Art Department, Christie’s: “Christie’s 20/21 March season launches our auction programme for the year with a robust presentation of blue-chip works of the 20th Century from prestigious provenances, showcased alongside exciting creations by the most sought-after artists active today. The majesty of Claude Monet’s view of the Seine is placed in dialogue with David Hockney’s iconic image of California. Masterpieces by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Michael Andrews highlight the enduring legacy of London as a vibrant art capital. René Magritte’s L'ami intime (The Intimate Friend) is the jewel of the ‘Art of the Surreal’, Christie’s uniquely devised auction happening once a year in London, dedicated to the exciting outputs of the Dada and Surrealist polymaths. Fittingly coinciding with the centenary of the Surrealist Manifesto, Magritte’s iconic canvas will lead our season. We look forward to convening collectors in our London galleries when we unveil the carefully selected works in the pre-sale exhibition, taking place at our headquarters on London’s King Street from 1 March.”
René Magritte’s L'ami intime (The Intimate Friend) (1958, estimate: £30,000,000-50,000,000) is offered from the Gilbert and Lena Kaplan Collection. Depicting the enigmatic bowler-hatted man, Magritte's 'everyman', the painting will lead the 24th edition of The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale. The auction will present the work of 14 artists, and with a low estimate of £48,000,000, represents the highest pre-sale estimate for the category in 24 years of the standalone sale being held.
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Francis Bacon’s Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963, estimate: £15,000,000-20,000,000), previously part of the collection of Roald Dahl, has been included in 32 major exhibitions of the artist’s work across 27 cities. Lucian Freud’s intimate portrait, Kai (1991-92, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000), depicts Kai Boyt, the son of Suzy Boyt, who also appears in the world record painting Large Interior W11 (after Watteau). Held in the same collection since 1995, Kai was unveiled in Freud's touring exhibition, which opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1993.
The 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale and The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale includes 112 lots, over half appearing for the first time at auction. Alexej von Jawlensky’s Frau mit Fächer (Frau aus Turkestan) (1912, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000) has remained in the same collection since 1960. The pioneering art dealer Galka Scheyer acquired the work directly from the artist – an exceptional provenance that is testament to the quality of the painting, positioning it alongside the Magritte, Hockney, Bacon, and Monet.
From Méret Oppenheim’s Tisch mit Vogelfüssen (1939, estimate: £100,000-200,000) to Hannah Höch’s Das schöne Mädchen (The Beautiful Girl) (circa 1920, estimate: £120,000-180,000), powerful connections are established across the centuries and genres in Christie’s 20/21 season. Tracey Emin’s I Wanted You to Fuck the Inside of my Mind (2018, estimate: £900,000-1,500,000) follows the incredible result achieved for Like a Cloud of Blood when it set a record for the artist at Christie’s in October 2022. Alice Neel’s David McKee and his First Wife Jane (1968, estimate: £1,200,000-1,800,000) sits alongside Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Of All The Seasons (2017, estimate: £500,000-700,000) and Sonia Delaunay’s Rythme-Couleur (no. 132) (1953, estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000).
A selection of Christie’s Stories to date relating to the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale can be found below: