Sotheby's secures two big-ticket private collections as auction houses compete for consignments

"Just one work from Lauder's trove accounts for more than a third of the consignment's total: Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) has been given an estimate in excess of $150m. Two of the artist's landscapes, Blooming Meadow (1906) and Forest Slope in Unterach (1917) are expected to sell for between $80m and $100m, and $70m and $90m, respectively."

"Jay Pritzker was a co-founder of the Hyatt hotel chain and a member of the prominent Pritzker family in Chicago (Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is Jay Pritzker's nephew). He was married for more than a half-century to Cindy. Together, they co-founded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize-the discipline's most coveted award-in 1979 and built an impressive art collection. Jay died in 1999 and Cindy died last March, aged 101."

"Works from the Pritzkers' collection headed to Sotheby's are led by Vincent van Gogh's Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887), a still-life of a stack of books with a $40m estimate. After passing through three generations of the Van Gogh family after the artist's death, Romans Parisiens' most recent auction appearance was 1988. According to Sotheby's, 19th-century viewers would have immediately recognised the yellow paperback covers in the painting as belonging to Charpentier books, from the Parisian publishing house that innovated inexpensive, mass-market publishing."

Sotheby's obtained two major private collections for its autumn New York sales amid a weakened market and mounting losses. The Pritzker collection comprises 37 works estimated to total about $120m. The Lauder collection comprises 55 works collectively estimated near $400m, anchored by Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer with an estimate above $150m and two Klimt landscapes with estimates up to $100m and $90m. The Lauder trove also contains works by Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch and Agnes Martin. The Pritzker sale is led by Vincent van Gogh's Romans Parisiens with a $40m estimate and historical provenance.

Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events