Christie’s is adding blockbuster works by Andy Warhol and René Magritte to its marquee sale of 20th-century art in New York next month.
Warhol’s Sixteen Jackies, 1964, and Magritte’s L’empire des lumières, 1949, are expected to fetch between US$25 million and US$35 million each. They will join several major works on the auction block at Christie’s Nov. 9 sale, including Claude Monet’s Le bassin aux nymphéas, with an estimate of at least US$65 million, Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement, with an estimate of at least US$50 million, and Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange), with an estimate in the range of US$45 million—among others.
Warhol’s black-and-white silk screen Sixteen Jackies is a 4-x-4 grid of a press photo taken of Jacqueline Kennedy during the funeral procession of her husband, John F. Kennedy, in 1963. The 6-and-a-half foot tall painting is one of five Warhol created, but the only one to repeat the same image in the grid and the only one in black-and-white, Christie’s said in a news release. It was first owned by Leo Castelli Gallery in New York.
Another version that includes various images of the former first lady and is colored in shades of blue in addition to black-and-white was sold from the Macklowe Collection in November 2021 for US$33.8 million, with fees, exceeding the US$20 million high estimate. The painting being offered at Christie’s was last sold for nearly US$1.9 million, with fees, at a Sotheby’s auction in November 1998 above a US$1.4 million high estimate.
Magritte’s L’empire des lumières is also from a celebrated series, in this case, the first of 17 oils the artist painted over 15 years that simultaneously depict day and night. A 1961 example fetched a record £59.4 million (US$79.8 million), with fees, at Sotheby’s in March 2022 in London, while a 1951 painting from the series, from record producer Mo Ostin’s collection, sold at Sotheby’s this past May in New York for US$42.3 million, with fees.
The Christie’s sale is of a painting—depicting a bright, cloud-filled sky above a darkened house lit by a street lamp and lights within—that was last sold by the auction house in November 2017 for US$20.6 million, with fees, above an US$18 million high estimate. The work, which was briefly in the collection of former vice president Nelson Rockefeller, is roughly 19 inches by 23 inches, smaller than the 3.75 feet by 4.75 feet size of the record-breaking work.
According to Christie’s, the painting was the first of the L’empire des lumières series Magritte finished, but it wasn’t the first he began. The auction house said each subsequent version was made for collectors in response to the popularity of the first.
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