One of Spanish master Pablo Picasso’s masterpieces, “Woman with a Clock,” sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday evening for $139 million, the second price ever achieved for the artist who died there 50 years ago.
In the crowded room at Sotheby’s headquarters in Manhattan, it took just a few minutes for this painting to go under the hammer over the phone for exactly $139.36 million including fees.
The 1932 painting, which Sotheby’s manager Brooke Lampley compared to “Picasso’s ‘Mona Lisa,'” depicts a companion of the Spanish artist, French painter Marie-Thérèse Walter, and was estimated at more than $120 million.
The painting belonged to wealthy New Yorker Emily Fisher Landau, who died this year at the age of 102 and whose collection of works by Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York on two special evenings on Wednesday and Thursday York.
The painting hung in Ms. Landau’s living room in Manhattan, the company said.
The auction house – owned by French and Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi – has already sold this Landau collection alone for $406 million.
Financial performance
The evening’s financial performances included “Flags” by American expressionist painter Jasper Johns, 93 years old, for $41 million and “Securing the Last Letter (Boss)” by American painter and photographer Ed Ruscha, 85 years old, for 39, 4 million dollars.
But it was Picasso, who died in 1973, who attracted the audience on Wednesday evening, his “Woman with the Clock” accounting for more than a third of sales.
Marie-Thérèse Walter was the “golden muse” of the Spanish master; he met his muse in Paris in 1927 when he married the Russian-Ukrainian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova.
The sale of “Woman with a Clock” is the second most expensive for Picasso’s works, as the artist now owns at least six paintings worth over $100 million.
He painted the same Marie-Therese Walter in “Sleeping Woman” (1934), which will be auctioned on Thursday by Sotheby’s competitor Christie’s, which is hoping for $25 to $35 million. Back in 2021, Christie’s sold “Woman Seated Near a Window (Marie-Thérèse)” for $103 million.
Another Picasso (“Nude on Sculptor’s Plate”) from 1932 was sold in 2010 for around $106 million by Christie’s, which is owned by French billionaire François Pinault’s Artémis holding.
The absolute record for Picasso is “Women of Algiers (Version “O”)” at $179.4 million: this oil on canvas from 1955 is the most expensive work of modern art ever sold at auction.
At the time of its sale, on May 11, 2015, also at Christie’s in New York, it even represented the absolute record for an art auction, which was surpassed in 2017 by the “Salvator Mundi” attributed to Leonardo da Vinci for 450 million dollars.
In the international context of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as inflation, the art market continues to be in good shape: the fall sales season in New York for the major auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and the smaller Phillips from November 7th to 15th is expected that they raise billions of dollars.