The specialist scoop: an exclusive look at the star lots making headlines this November

‘The L’Empires des lumières was René Magritte’s most significant, sustained series. There are 17 oils painted across 15 years. Each is entirely distinct, but the Magritte from the Mica Ertegun Collection contains everything that Magritte knew and was capable of.

‘The sky has wonderful depth and freedom. The contrast and poetry of night and day is exceptionally crisp. And the foreground elements — the façade, trees, rock, watery reflection, which Magritte first introduces to the series here — are seamlessly integrated.

‘As well as the painting reproduces, there is no substitute for experiencing its immersive scale, technical mastery and sense of the unexpected first-hand.’

‘Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) is an icon of Ed Ruscha’s oeuvre. When you have the chance to stand in front of this work, you are consumed by its monumental size and the crispness with which it’s painted.

‘The Standard gas station was a motif Ruscha returned to several times over the course of his career, and it came to define him in a lot of ways. It first appeared in 1963 when Ruscha made Twentysix Gasoline Stations, an artist’s book of photographs of the stations along Route 66, the long highway he drove on from his home state of Oklahoma to Los Angeles. That same year, he painted a large-scale night painting of the Standard station scene called Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas.

‘He completed this complementary daytime scene the following year. In comparison to the nightscape, this work is characterised by a gorgeous, vibrant blue sky that takes up the whole expanse. He also adds the torn Western magazine in the upper right-hand corner. It’s painted in such a hyper-realistic way, in contrast to the rest of the painting’s pared-down style. The magazine is a nod to cowboy iconography as well as his love of text and language.

‘This work has remained in a private collection for almost 50 years, though it’s been extensively exhibited. Most recently, it was part of the artist’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and then at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.’

‘Still Life on a Glass Table (1971) is an example of the great naturalistic portraits that David Hockney was creating in the late 1960s through the early 1970s. These works are all multi-faceted, and this painting is both an investigation into a personal relationship and a technical exploration of light, transparency and reflection. Here, the glass table and reflective objects show Hockney’s incredible virtuosity in capturing the intangible.

‘This painting is also deeply personal. Painted in the wake of an emotional breakup with Peter Schlesinger, who many of these works were created around, Hockney evokes his presence without there being a central figure. In this case, many of the objects were Peter’s, and the shadow under the table takes the form of a figure. It’s a moment of reconciling with the loss of a great love.

‘This comes from the collection of Mica Ertegun who, as a designer, leaves behind a legacy of speaking through personal spaces. Much in the way this painting speaks to Hockney and Peter Schlesinger’s relationship through these objects, Mica, too, was acclaimed for reflecting who people are through their interiors.’

‘Alberto Giacometti’s Femme qui marche (II) is one of the artist’s earliest explorations of the standing female nude, a motif which would preoccupy him throughout his career. From 1932-1936, he experimented with several different versions of this form. The first version includes a triangular indentation just below the breasts of the figure (Femme qui marche I). He would also add Surrealist elements to the sculpture, such as the neck of a cello in place of the woman’s head and two long, slender wooden arms attached to the original plaster cast.

‘The current version is the product of further reworking by the artist: he removed the mysterious cavity in the torso, reduced the space between her legs, remodeled her back, and added a distinct asymmetry to her pose by altering the angle of her shoulders to create a more pronounced slope. The resulting sinuous line running through her body is eternal, timeliness and enduring, evoking Egyptian and Ancient Greek sculpture. The perfect fusion of the ancient and modern.

‘Originally cast at Giacometti’s request for his family doctor, the work has subsequently been housed by the same family for over 40 years. This work comes from a small edition of eight sculptures, with two casts in the esteemed collections of the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice and the Baltimore Museum of Art.’

‘It’s very exciting to have a work like this that is so fresh to the market. It’s never been at auction before, and comes from a very prestigious private collection. The painting is extraordinary in scale and quality. At 60 inches, it represents the largest head of a figure done by Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose heads have long commanded attention because they capture his extraordinary abilities as an artist.

‘Because Basquiat died so young, his body of work remains small, and yet interest in him continues to grow. This painting is from a crucial year in the Basquiat oeuvre — 1982 — which is considered the apex of his artistic maturity. It was the year when he really came into his own and made some of the most important paintings of his short career.

‘This work is rare and extraordinary, but above all it has that raw Basquiat energy that defines his greatest works. There’s a frenzy to the lines around the head and jacket, and it reflects his interest in and examination of portraiture. It’s almost as if you can feel the weight of art history held in this one image.’

‘City Landscape (1955) is one of the most significant works by Joan Mitchell to come to market in terms of scale, composition, date and provenance. The year 1955 was particularly generative for her — bolstered by mounting critical and commercial success, she established herself amongst the vanguard of New York’s Abstract Expressionist elite, which was very male-dominated at the time.

‘Her visual vocabulary also became more assertive and sophisticated. This work ranks amongst the best paintings by Mitchell from this period. The composition teems with an astonishing variety of colour and gesture that shows the confidence in her hand. The frantic energy connects to the title, and you can feel the intensity with which she applies the paint.

‘This painting has only had one owner since it was acquired by David Rockefeller for The Rockefeller University in 1958. Comparable works from this period are all in prestigious institutional collections around the world, including a painting with the same title that is part of the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection. So for a collector who is passionate about trailblazing female artists, Abstract Expressionism, post-war American art or masterpiece-quality works in general, this is a very rare opportunity.’ 

‘This work is an exciting rediscovery within Henri Rousseau’s oeuvre, which is incredibly limited in quantity. A toll collector by day, Rousseau was a self-taught artist who only fully committed himself to painting in his later years. On top of their rarity, very few works meet the extensive criteria required to be considered authentic. Within this, even fewer works remain in private collections, one being Les Flamants, which set the artist’s record when it sold at Christie’s in 2023.

‘Femme en rouge dans la fôret (1905) is the only other known ironclad work in this category that could be considered a jungle painting, which represents Rousseau’s most iconic style and mature subject matter. In this particular painting, a societal woman dressed in red appears promenading through a forest. In spite of this surprising setting, she’s completely absorbed within this otherworldly realm, dwarfed by these large palm fronds and the surrounding verdant foliage.

‘It’s thought that Rousseau never actually left his native France, so even though he created these exotic dreamscapes, his reference imagery was in reality much closer to home. He was inspired by pop culture, encyclopedias, novels, postcards, journals and also frequented the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The plants he discovered in the gardens came to dominate his oeuvre as he sought to recreate the feeling of being engulfed by the greenery.

‘Rousseau is a key figure within 20th century art, one who heavily inspired the likes of Picasso and the surrealists. He is the ultimate artist’s artist.’

‘What makes this painting stand out is the exceptionally vibrant color palate of purples and oranges, blues and pinks set against a crisp white. It is a masterful work that combines Willem de Kooning’s signature styles of gestural abstraction, figuration and his ribbon paintings into a completely fresh visual language, resulting in a work that is a true late career triumph.

‘The availability of archival material showing de Kooning’s creative process behind this work is quite unique. It was featured in Architectural Digest, where an image of it in the artist’s studio reveals the layers of tracing and drawing he incorporated alongside painting. We also see de Kooning painting the work in the 1982 documentary film Strokes of Genius: de Kooning on de Kooning, in which we catch a rare glimpse of him applying the paint with various tools — a paint brush as well as a taper knife, showing the complex variety of techniques he called upon to create the work.

‘This painting has been in the same private collection for over 25 years, which is exciting to present on the market after such a long time. Its unique palate and style allow us to look at de Kooning’s late career in a completely fresh way.’

‘It is a true honour to represent Pommiers en fleurs, an icon of early Impressionist painting from 1872, on behalf of the Union League Club of Chicago which has cherished it for almost 130 years since its acquisition in 1895.

‘As Claude Monet’s first recorded depiction of the blossoming apple tree, this rare and scintillating scene employs fresh and verdant colour with a youthful energy and excitement that remains palpable in its gestural execution. It truly captures the spirit of the critical breakthroughs Monet would find in Argenteuil, a place and time synonymous with the burgeoning Impressionist movement which would go on to change the face of art for the 20th Century.

‘Monet’s own belief in the quality of Pommiers en fleurs is further reinforced by its exhibition history, having been chosen for display in the second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876; its enduring impact further shared upon inclusion in Monet’s very first institutional exhibition in the United States of America. Representing a series of important “firsts” as Monet entered the critical years that would establish him as the preeminent artistic voice of his generation, the painting serves as a poetic metaphor for Monet’s own career at the point of its “Eureka!” moment – its flourishing.

‘We celebrate Monet's astounding contribution as we mark this significant year, the 150th Anniversary of the first Impressionist Exhibition.’

‘Large Vase of Flowers is so quintessentially Jeff Koons. One’s first encounter with this bouquet is pure, unbridled joy. The 140 exquisitely carved flowers, polychromed to perfection, entice anyone in their midst. Spend some more time, and the sculpture begins to reveal its many conceptual secrets.

‘Flowers are historical, biological, timeless yet fleeting. They represent life, romance, fertility, fragility. They act as metaphor for an entire human life or the quickest lustful gesture. Koons wants us to experience all these feelings simultaneously, and enduringly. It’s why experiencing this sculpture is so overwhelming; it’s why it has been held in the same private collection since it was created more than thirty years ago; it’s why it’s been exhibited all over the world and even why it appeared right at home when holding court at Versailles.’ 

‘This painting’s palette is what makes it singular. Typically, when we see works by Cecily Brown, there are more flesh tones and verdant backgrounds. Here, you have this swirling vortex of blues as if you’re looking at an ocean.

‘Brown is lauded for her fusion of the figurative and the abstract. In this painting, you can almost see a figure with arms raised in the upper right-hand corner, and then it dissolves.

‘In her work, Brown also makes frequent reference to literature and art, from Bosch and Rubens to de Kooning and Bacon. The title The Butcher and the Policeman is pulled from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novella that helped expose the horrors of colonialism.

‘There has been a strong curatorial focus on Brown’s work recently. Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was a resounding success last year, and a mid-career retrospective that opened in September at the Dallas Museum will travel to the Barnes Foundation in 2025.

‘The present work comes from a private collection that includes other works coming to market this fall by Roni Horn and Louise Bourgeois, artists who also meditate on the concept of transformation.’