Sotheby’s and Christie’s Offer Rare Hebrew Bible and Masterpiece Paintings at Spring Auctions in New York

New York is hosting the traditional spring auction season for the art market from Thursday: the world’s two largest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, will offer an additional Hebrew Bible for tens of millions of dollars. a thousand years old and exceptional paintings by Klimt and Douanier Rousseau.

Highlight of sales from May 11 to 19 in one of the world capitals of the arts, Sotheby’s will sell the oldest and most complete Hebrew Bible, dating from the tenth century, which should leave on May 17 for an astronomical price between 30 and $50 million.

Already presented in New York in February and in March in Tel Aviv, the Sassoon Codex, named after its best-known owner, David Solomon Sassoon (died 1942), dates from the year 900 of our era and represents the one of the most expensive manuscripts on the antiquarian book market.

This work, in an exceptional state of preservation and from which only a few pages are missing, binds 24 books of the Hebrew Bible.

On a still insolent art auction market – despite the succession of international crises – Sotheby’s will also offer on May 16 the painting “Insel am Attersee” (1901-1902) by the painter Austrian Gustav Klimt.

– “Excessively rare” –

This is the first time that this masterpiece, “exceedingly rare”, according to the house owned by Franco-Israeli media and telecom magnate Patrick Drahi, has been offered at auction after decades of conservation by private owners.

It could be sold for $45 million.

At competitor Christie’s, controlled by the Artémis holding company of French billionaire François Pinault, sales begin on May 11 with an expected record for “Les Flamants” (1910) by French post-Impressionist painter Henri (Douanier) Rousseau.

“You can go your whole life without ever seeing a painting like this (…) probably one of the rarest that we will see at Christie’s”, welcomed Max Carter, vice-president of the company. auction for 20th and 21st century art.

The painting “Les Flamants” could go for 30 million dollars on Thursday, while 30 years ago the record for a Douanier Rousseau was 4.4 million dollars.

– 2022, a record year –

Sotheby’s will also offer an exceptional “Now’s the Time” by American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat who died in 1988 at the age of 27, which could reach more than 30 million dollars.

Finally, the French sculptor and visual artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) will be honored with her “Spider” three meters high and which could be purchased for 30 to 40 million dollars, a record.

However, these spring sales are unlikely to exceed the highs reached during the fall and spring sales in 2022, one of the most prosperous years in the history of the art market.

At Christie’s, the art collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in 2018, passed the historic $1 billion mark in November (nearly $1.5 billion in total) with a slew of records for works by Van Gogh, Cézanne or Gauguin.

Last May, a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” by Andy Warhol, went for 195 million dollars.

At Sotheby’s, also a year ago, the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, reached $922 million.

© 2023 AFP