October Auction Highlights: Monet, Kandinsky, and “Jodi” the Nanotyrannus
From a record for art auctioned in France to a Dalí x Duchamp chess collaboration, here are the month’s hottest moments from the block
October saw major auction weeks in Paris and London. Despite the unrest in Paris that caused Art Basel Paris to close early, the auction houses carried on, with the October sales achieving over $334 million. Across the Channel, “Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Evening Sale” became the highest value single-owner collection ever sold at Christie’s London, with a $142,341,651 total. New Meanwhile, New York delved into the full scope of art history with the recent “Magnum Opus: A Private Collection of Exceptional Art and Objects Through the Ages” that met an antiquities record. Here are the sales that stood out this past month.
1. Claude Monet, Iris | Sotheby’s Paris
There were four Monets in “La Collection Schlumberger: Le Temps Retrouvé,” the Parisian auction of the collection of Jean Schlumberger. But Iris, which dates from the Impressionist artist’s late period, was the breakout star of the evening. Nearly six feet wide, it is filled with the florals that Monet explored throughout his career, perhaps most famously in his Water Lilies, but rendered large here in looser brushwork. At $56.2 million, Iris set the price record for an artwork sold in France.
2. Barbara Hepworth, Sculpture with Colour (Eos) | Christie’s London
October saw a sale record for a single artwork by Dame Barbara Hepworth when Eos, named for the Ancient Greek dawn goddess, was auctioned for $8.2 million. The 1946 work itself was once photographed by Lee Miller for Vogue, and is carved from a block of pale stone, with painted hollows. Hepworth’s sculptures occupied all three of the Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale’s top positions, with Figure (Sunion) fetching $5.4 million and Sea Form (Porthmeor) achieving $2.04 million.
3. Wassily Kandinsky, Das bunte Leben | Christie’s London
Das bunte Leben (The Colorful Life) became the most expensive work of art to sell at London Frieze Week in the past five years. The 1907 work is figurative, unlike the later Kandinsky paintings that usually come to mind on hearing the artist’s name. It bears the influence of Fauvism en route to abstraction. Sold under duress in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in 1940, it was restituted to the original owner’s heirs in 2023 and brought in $41.9 million at Christie’s.
4. Salvador Dalí, Échecs: Hommage à Marcel Duchamp | Phillips New York
This surrealist chess set more than doubled its estimate, realizing $109,650 against an estimate of $30,000–50,000. What makes the chess set interesting is its combination of Surrealist humor, the friendship between Salvador Dalí and Marcel Duchamp, and the personal origins of its pieces. The result was a reinvention of the traditional chess set, with pieces modeled on Dalí’s fingers, those of his wife Gala, and their teeth, which give the metallic set a slightly macabre effect suitable for the weeks before Halloween.
5. Roman Imperial Marble Torso of an Emperor | Sotheby’s New York
This 2,000-year-old marble torso set a new auction record for an ancient Roman antiquity, fetching $34.26 million as part of the “Magnum Opus” evening auction. The well-preserved sculpture, believed to have once stood in a temple in what is now Croatia, was designed to communicate imperial authority. Its Parian marble-carved armor worn by the unidentified emperor depicts a sun god driving a four-horse chariot, along with other symbols of Roman military and political supremacy. Following a bidding contest between five collectors, the ancient masterpiece more than quadrupled the $7.36 million it previously sold for.
6. Francis Bacon, Figure in Movement | Christie’s London
This 1978 painting was another standout from London Frieze Week and was sold as part of “Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection,” an auction that brought in a total of $142.9 million for the night. Figure in Movement commanded $23.7 million and appeared in two major Bacon retrospectives.
7. “Jodi” the Nanotyrannus | Sotheby’s New York
Dinosaurs skeletons are normally a star of Sotheby’s Geek Week in July, but this week there was an extraordinary one-lot sale for “Jodi” the Nanotyrannus. Initially estimated at $6,000,000–9 million, the 9 ft. 6 in. skeleton more than quintupled expectations, taking in $47.25 million, the second-highest amount ever paid for dinosaur bones at auction, following five minutes of rapid bidding. Nanotyrannus skeletons are exceptionally rare, with only two other nearly complete ones known to exist.
Plus, Looking Ahead: Auctions to Follow in November
October was quieter on the jewelry front compared to expectations for November, which will feature major offerings in Geneva as well as Hong Kong. In Paris, the five-part Al Thani auction has magnitude as well as attention at the start of the month. And November means Marquee Week in New York, the biannual event that draws bidders from all the world and rarely passes without leaving a price record in the dust. This year, Blaquier-Arrieta has a noteworthy Cézanne and a Van Gogh that has been estimated at $180 million at Sotheby’s; over at Rockefeller Center, Christie’s just announced a Gustav Klimt landscape and will offer treasures from the collections of music industry legend Clive Davis and the Tisch Family.