Sotheby’s and Christie’s to Sell Naive Art and Rare Hebrew Bible in Spring 2023 Auctions

The two most important houses in the world, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, will notably sell at auction works by masters of naive art and symbolism and the Codex Sassoon estimated between 30 and 50 million dollars.

By Figaro with AFP

Published on 05/10/2023 at 1:14 p.m.update on 05/10/2023 at 2:33 p.m.

New York is hosting the traditional spring auction season for the art market from Thursday, May 11: the world’s two largest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, will offer a Hebrew Bible for tens of millions of dollars. more than a thousand years old and exceptional paintings by Klimt and Douanier Rousseau.

Highlight of the 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 X^e century, which is set to depart on May 17 for an astronomical price of between $30 million and $50 million.

” READ ALSO – Le Douanier Rousseau: naive, naive and a half

Already presented in New York in February and in March in Tel-Aviv, le codex Sassoonnamed after its best-known owner, David Solomon Sassoon (died 1942), dates from 900 CE and is 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, links 24 books of the Hebrew Bible.

On a market for auctions of works of art whose health is still insolent – despite the succession of international crises -, Sotheby’s will also offer on May 16 the painting Island on the Attersee (1901-1902) of the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. This is the first time that this masterpiece, “exceedingly rare”, according to the house of French-Israeli media and telecom magnate Patrick Drahi, is offered for auction after decades of preservation by private owners. It could be sold for $45 million.

” READ ALSO – Gustave Klimt’s masterpieces come to life

At rival Christie’s, controlled by French billionaire François Pinault’s Artémis holding company, sales begin on May 11 with an expected record for Flamingos (1910) by French post-impressionist painter Henri (Le Douanier) Rousseau. “You can go your whole life without ever seeing a painting like this (…), probably one of the rarest you will see at Christie’s“, welcomed Max Carter, vice-president of the auction company for the arts of the XX^e and 21^e centuries. The Web Flamingos could leave for 30 million dollars on Thursday, whereas 30 years ago the record for a Douanier Rousseau had been 4.4 million dollars.

2022, a record year difficult to beat

Sotheby’s will also offer an exceptional Now’s the Time of the 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 in height and which could be purchased for 30 to 40 million dollars, a record. However, these spring sales are unlikely to exceed the peaks 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 Microsoft co-founder’s art collection Paul Allen, who died in 2018, had exceeded the historic one billion dollar mark in November (almost 1.5 billion in total) with a rain 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.
Finally at Sotheby’s, also a year ago, the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, had reached 922 million dollars.