In late August, Christie's announced the upcoming auction of Microsoft co-founder Paul's art collection. G. Allen, which promises to be the most significant auction of its kind with an overall estimate of $1 billion. Proceeds will go to philanthropic purposes only.
See also: Paul Allen's $1 Billion Art Collection Goes to Auction
In a new press release, Christie's has now announced further details about the Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection auction, which will take place on 9 and 10 November at New York's Rockefeller Center.
Over 150 important works from more than 500 years of art history will be put up for auction. Highlights include La montagne Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne (estimate upon request, over $100 million), Verger avec cyprès by Vincent van Gogh (estimate upon request), Maternité II by Paul Gauguin (estimate upon request), Birch Forest by Gustav Klimt (estimate upon request), Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) by Lucian Freud (estimate upon request), Le Grand Canal à Venise by Édouard Manet (estimate upon request), Waterloo Bridge, soleil voilé by Claude Monet (estimate upon request ), Small False Start by Jasper Johns (estimate upon request), Three Studies for Self-Portrait by Francis Bacon (estimate upon request), Depositing of John Bellini's Three Pictures in La Chiesa Redentore, Venice by William Turner (estimate upon request), La voix du sang by René Magritte (estimate $12-18 million), Queen Anne's Lace Near Kilham by David Hockney ($8-12 million), White Rose with Larkspur No. 1 by Georgia O'Keeffe ($6-8 million), The Five Senses: Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste and Touch by Jan Brueghel d. J. (estimate 4-6 million USD) and finally Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) by Georges Seurat (estimate upon request, but expected to fetch over $100 million).
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Max Carter, Vice Chairman, 20th and 21st Century Art, Americas, remarked: “The Paul G. Allen Collection, like Cézanne’s breathtaking view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, is the summit of the mountain. From Brueghel’s Five Senses and the Venetian imaginings of Turner and Manet, to late 19th-century masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet, Klimt’s Birch Forest and Freud’s Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau), arguably the greatest set piece of the last fifty years, the Collection is bounded only by vision and quality. And then there is Seurat’s Les Poseuses. Formerly in the collections of Alphonse Kann, John Quinn and Henry McIlhenny and featured in the 1913 Armory Show, when it appeared at auction for the one and only time in 1970, the art historian John Russell suggested that it was one of the three or four most beautiful works of art to be sold since the war. It remains so today.”
See also: The Armory Show: The Exhibition That Changed Everything
Ahead of its auction, Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection is scheduled to tour starting on 5 October in Hong Kong (through 7 October), followed by Los Angeles (11-15 October), Taipei (13-15 October), Shanghai (14-15 October), London (14-17 October) and Paris (20-22 October), before heading to New York on 29 October.
