Late Paul. G. Allen collection of paintings has surpassed all previous auction records in history by securing $ 1.5 billion.
It is considered to be one of the largest and most exceptional art auction in history.
In New York, auctioneers Adrien Meyer and Jussi Pylkkänen took bids from clients in 19 countries. The sale attracted 2.2 million viewers across Christie’s global platforms.
Along with the demand at auction, the preview exhibition saw tremendous interest, drawing 20,000 visitors across ten days in New York.
Never have international auction house Christie’s got that kind of sum for any of its auctions in one evening sale.
The auction took place in New York on Nov. 9, 2022.
There were 60 great artworks that got a total of $1,506,386,000.
The co-founder of Microsoft, the late Paul G. Allen is an American business magnate who perhaps had the most valuable private collection.
Five of the paintings owned by him achieved prices above $100 million.
The works sold higher than the estimated minimum bid price at the auction.
According to the wish of Mr. Allen who is also a big philanthropist all the proceeds from this series of sales would be given to philanthropy.
Christie presented in New York the collection as “Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection” from 9–10 November at Rockefeller Center.
The collection included more than 150 masterpieces spanning 500 years of art history giving it a vast historical canvas.
Paul G. Allen’s collection has a range of ground-breaking artist like Paul Cezanne, David Hockney and Georges Seurat and Jasper Johns.
Georges Seurat’s painting Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version), tripling the record price for the artist got one of the highest prices for a single painting selling for $149,240,000.
Seurat’s Pointillism was of particular interest to Mr. Allen, who once said, ‘Because of my computer background, I’m attracted to things like Pointillism or a Jasper Johns ‘numbers’ work because they come from breaking something down into its components — like bytes or numbers, but in a different kind of language.’
Allen’s collection had from Renaissance masterpieces to cutting edge modern paintings.
Never before have more than two paintings exceeded $100 million in a single sale, but during this sale five paintings had sold for more than $ 100 million each primarily those of fathers of modern painting like Cezanne, Seurat, Van Gogh and Gauguin.
Day Dream, a luminous 1980 portrait by Andrew Wyeth, depicting the artist’s most well-known model, Helga Testorf , got $23,290,000 more than doubling the artist record.
In this historic sale works of many artists achieved a record sum for their works which included Thomas Hart Benton, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Paul Cezanne, Henri Edmond Cross, Max Ernst, Sam Francis, Lucian Freud, Paul Gauguin, Barbara Hepworth, Jasper Johns, Gustav Klimt, Diego Rivera, Georges Seurat, Henri Le Sidaner, Paul Signac, Edward Steichen, Vincent van Gogh, and Andrew Wyeth.
Paul Cezanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, was sold for $137,790,000 breaking the existing record for the artist.
It was executed in 1888-1890 as part a series of canvases featuring Aix-en-Provence’s famous mountain. It also represented the artist changing his style and turning towards abstract breaking down the scene into geometric components and paving the way for Cubism.
Johns’s Small False Start (1960) got $55,350,000, setting an artist record.
One of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower paintings, White Rose with Larkspur No. I, sold for $26,725,000.
Mr. Allen’s collection highlights landmark moments in the development of landscape painting across centuries. In addition to Cezanne’s magisterial vision of the Mont Sainte-Victoire, Vincent van Gogh’s landscape sold for $117,180,000, breaking the current record for the artist at auction. The painting comes from a group of 14 canvases that showcase different views of an orchard in bloom.
Gustav Klimt’s Birch Forest (1903) sold for $104,585,000 and setting a record for the artist.
Paul Gauguin’s monumental Maternité II, painted in Tahiti in 1899, more than doubled the previous record for the artist, selling for $105,730,000.
Posed within Edenic surroundings, two women flank a kneeling mother as she nurses her baby. In this Gauguin takes inspiration from the Madonna and child.
The celebrated ‘Madonna of the Magnificat’ by Sandro Botticelli, of the Florentine Renaissance, sold for $48,480,000 depicting divine beauty.
Lucian Freud’s portraiture sold for $86,265,000, breaking the artist record. Francis Bacon’s triptych Three Studies for Self-Portrait (1979) sold for $29,015,000. The work depicts three close-up views of the artist’s head, from different angles