By Carter B. Horsley

The Fall auction season of 2005 kicks off with this excellent evening auction of Impressionist & Modern Art at Christie's November 7, 2005, highlighted by an important and impressive oil by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), a great early portrait by Pablo Picasso, a luminous Neo-Impressionist work by Theo van Rysselberghe, a bright and strong Cubist still life by Juan Gris, a good painting by Alberto Giacometti, and two good works by Camille Pissarro.

The most important work in the auction is Lot 7, "La Blanchisseuse," a superb and stark portrait of a laundry worker by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. An oil on canvas, it measures 36 1/2 by 29 1/2 inches and was executed in 1886-7. It has a conservative estimate of $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 given the scarcity of large works by the artist on the market and the strength of its composition and its monumentality. It sold for $22,416,000 including the buyer's premium, breaking the previous world auction record of $14,522,500 for the artist set at Christie's May 12, 1997. It has been consigned from a private American collection and is one of many properties in the auction from that collection that were formerly in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Neison Harris of Chicago. Mr. Harris was a founder of Toni Home Permanent and he died in 2001 and she died in July. Their heirs have consigned the work. It was recently exhibited in the "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago this year.

The catalogue entry for the lot notes that the painting "was his finest painting to date, and indeed, it is arguably his first masterwork," addig that "there is noprior picture in his oeuvre in which the young painter had so powerfully and dramatically characterized this subject, or expressed his deepening insight into the world around him with such clarity and certainty in his technical means. Projecting himself into the very soul of this young woman, who may have been no older than himself, Lautre demonstrated a degree of worldly understnding and compassion well beyond his years....The model for this painting was Carmen Gaudin, who in fact made her living as a laundress. Francois Gauzi, writing much later, related a story in which Lautrec and [Henri] Rachou spotted Carmen as she was leaving a restaurant sometime in mid-1885. Lautrec was irresistibly attracted to red-headed women, and is supported to have walked right up to her and examined her closely. He exclaimed to Rachou, 'what an air of spoiled meat she has....,' apparently referring to the fact that like many laundrymaids, she probable worked as a parttime prostititue."

The auction was quite successful with 92 percent of the 63 offered lots selling for $160,931,200, nicely in the middle of the pre-sale estimate of $134.9 million to $189.3 million. After the sale, auctioneer Christopher Burge said that the results were extraordinary considering that there were two "disappointments." He said the auction's total was the highest at Christie's since "the crazy 1989-1990 season." He noted that 45 percent of the lots sold above the high estimate indicating "a very strong market." He said that 47 percent of the buyers were European, 38 percent were American, 10 percent were Asian and 5 percent "other." He added that the auction house had received "interest" in all the lots that did not sell.

The two "disappointments" were Lot 11, "Les marguerites," a large 1919 still life by Henri Matisse that had been estimated at $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 and was passed at $8,800,000, and a landscape by Claude Monet, Lot 16, which had been estimated at $4,000,000 to $6,000,000 and was passed at $3,200,000.

The works consigned by the "private American collection" are highlighted in a separate catalogue that argues, in an essay by Richard R. Brettell, the Margaret McDermott Distinghished Professor Art and Aesthetics at the Unnversity of Texas at Dallas, that that the collection had assembled a "triptych" of Impressionist landscapes that were comparable in quality to a "triptych" assembled by Ernest May who gave it to the French nation encadre' en triptyche (famed as a triptych) to form what remains one of the enduring mouments of Impressionist landscape painting. "May's triptych, seen by millions - indeed hundreds of millions - of visitors since it first entered the Jeu de Paume, before being transferred to the Musee d'Orsay, has become a touchstone of consistency in Impressionist landscape painting that has not been superseded. The works in the May "triptych" were landscapes by Monet, Pissarro and Sisley and they are all painted in 1872. The catalogue notes that these three painters spent part of the Franco-Prussian war in England studying landscapes by Constable and Turner, adding that "Their 'time-away' gave each a combustible combination of objectivity and guilt that created the conditions for great art." The catalogue observes that "Mr. May formed a triptych of paintings ...., which collectively presents an image of a France without damage, reparations, or memories of war. This is Impressionism as a healing art for a wounded nation....France survived without apparent harm in paintings of an almost sublime calm and confidence."

Professor Brettell recounts encountering three landscapes by the same three artists in 1980, "a triptych that was more complex than Ernest May's famous first attempt," adding that "each of which was larger and all of which were collectively more important than the May triptych....For each man, Pissarro held the center of a world of flux. For the later collector, the central landscape is larger than its flanking pair....From the stately rhythmic verticals of the poplar trees in the middle disance to the repetitive plants, sheaves, and haystacks that give order to the hilly foreground, Pissarro's is a landscape completely organized by generations of peasants."

The Pissarro is Lot 8, "Paysage, la moisson, Pontoise." An oil on canvas that measures 25 1/2 by 31 7/8 inches, it was painted in 1873. and has an estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000. It sold for $5,168,000.

It is a fine work by Pissarro and a detail of it is the front-cover illustration of the catalogue.

Lot 13, "Bords de Seine à Port-Marly," is an oil on canvas by Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) that is one of the three works in the new "triptych." It measures 21 1/2 by 25 5/8 inches and is dated 1875. It has an estimate of $1,800,000 to $2,500,000. It sold for $1,808,000. It is pleasantly colorful, but not a great Sisley.

The third work in this new "triptych" is Lot 16, "Route à Louveciennes, effet de neige," by Claude Monet (1840-1926). An oil on canvas that measures 22 by 25 7/8 inches, it was painted 1869-1870. It has a very ambitious estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000,000. A detail of this lot is the back-cover illustration of the catalogue. It passed at $3,200,000.

The notion of assembling three landscapes by different artists and calling the group a triptych may be good marketing but it really is stretching the notion a bit too far especially when the subjects and seasons are different.

Other works from the same private American collection include large still lifes by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Joan Miro.

Lot 11, "Les marguerites," is an oil on canvas by Matisse that measures 39 1/2 by 28 3/4 inches. Executed in 1919, it has an ambitious estimate of $10,000,000 to $15,000,000. It is pretty and bright, but could have been painted by almost anyone. It passed at $8,800,000.

A far more interesting and successful work is Lot 12, 'Nature morte au raisin," by Joan Miró (1893-1983). Painted in 1920, it is a small oil on canvas that measures 12 3/4 by 14 inches. It has a modest estimate of $800,000 to $1,200,000. It sold for $2,256,000.

The rest of the auction has some stunning works.

Lot 25 is a magnificent early work by Pablo Picasso entitled "Buveuse accoudée." An oil on board, it measures 26 1/2 by 20 1/2 inches and was executed in 1901. It has a very conservative estimate of $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 probably reflecting the fact that his early works tend to be dark and brooding and almost primitive in contrast to his subsequent exploration of many different styles. This great work has been consigned by the collection of Evelyn Annenberg Hall and was formerly in the collections of George Gershwin and John Hay Whitney. It sold for $6,288,000.

The catalogue provides the following commentary:

"The painting is part of an important group of more than thirty works that the nineteen-year-old artist made within a month of his arrival in the capital, in preparation for a watershed exhibition of his art at Ambroise Vollard's gallery on the Rue Laffitte. The exhibition had been arranged by P\g ere Manach, Picasso's friend from Barcelona, who shared an apartment with him on the Boulevard de Clichy and acted as the young painter's dealer and agent.....The Vollard show was the first major exhibition of Picasso's work outside Spain and marks a crucial juncture in his career. Vollard was well-known as a dealer in works by Cézanne, Gauguin, and other leading French artists....Vollard's exhibition of Picasso's work brought the artist widespread recognition and acclaim....The model for the present painting was probably one of the many prostitutes who frequented the cafes of Montmartre. The motif of the solitary female drinker had carried overtones of sexual availability since the days of the Impressionists....In Picasso's painting, the woman's garish make-up and hardened features mark her indelibly as a member of the Parisian demi-monde recalling the eccentric-looking cabaret dancers of Toulouse-Lautrec. The women's hands are bony and elongated in the tradition of El Greco, and the electric lights of the cafe give her skin an ashen, ghoulish glow...."

Lot 4 is a very beautiful Pointilist work by Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) that inexplicably is being sold by the Museum of Modern Art to benefit it acquisitions fund. Entitled "Port de Cette, les tartanes," it is an oil on canvas with painted liner that measures 23 1/2 by 27 1/2 inches. Executed in 1892, it has a modest estimate of $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. It was given to the Museum of Modern Art in 1983 by Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney. It sold for $3,152,000, breaking the previous world auction record of $2,649,500 for the artist set at Sotheby's November 5, 2002.

Van Rysselberghe had become close with Paul Signac, one of the leading adherents of Neo-Impressionist and Divisionism pioneered by Seurat. This work was painted the year after Seurat died while on a sailing trip with Signac.

Another highlight of the auction is a bold and very vibrant still life by Juan Gris (1887-1927), Lot 26, "Verre et carte à jouer." An oil on canvas, it measures 18 1/8 by 13 inches and was executed in 1915. It has an estimate of $2,200,000 to $2,800,000. It sold for $2,248,000. It has been consigned from the collection of Katharine and Morton G. Schamberg of Chicago.

"Verre et carte à jouer shows Gris in his most dynamic and ebulliently footloose synthetic cubist manner, in which he playfully experimented with superimposed planes, like cut sheets of papiers collés, that coyly engage the viewer's perception of depth vs. flatness," the catalogue entry for this lot noted.

Lot 36 is an impressive study for Le grand déjeuner, an important work in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York by Fernand Léger (1881-1955)(see The City Review article on an Léger exhibition). It is one of four large-scale oil studies and, according to the catalogue, this is the only one to employ a purely grisaille palette and was made about the same time as a version in the minneapolis Insitute of Arts. It has an estimate of $3,500,000 to $4,500,000 and is the front-cover illustration of the catalogue. It sold for $4,832,000.

Lot 49, "La partie de cartes," is a small but very fine oil and paper collage on panel laid down on cradled panel by Fernand Léger. Painted in 1915, it measures 15 1/2 by 9 3/4 inches and has an estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. It sold for $2,144,000.

Claude Monet is famous for his series of paintings of waterlilies, the Thames River, haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, poplars and the rocky formations at Etretat on the Normandie coast. Lot 58 is a fine example of the Etretat series. Entitled "Aiguille d'Etretat, marée basse," it is an oil on canvas that measures 23 3/4 by 31 7/8 inches. It was executed in 1883. It has a very conservative estimate of $700,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $1,920,000.

Lot 22 is a pleasant, large, square waterlily painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926). An oil on canvas, it is 39 1/2 inches square and is dated 1907. It has an estimate of $10,000,000 to $15,000,000. It is the back-cover illustration of the catalogue. It sold for $14,016,000 and had been sold at Christie's in 1989 for about $11,000,000.

Lot 51 is a wonderful and large "Painting" by Joan Miró (1893-1983) that has been consigned by the collection of John Russell, the art critic, and Rosamond Bernier, the art lecturer. An oil on canvas that measures 35 by 45 5/8 inches, it was painted in 1925 and the catalogue has a photograph of the artist making a change to it in 1964. It has a modest estimate of $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. It sold for $2,704,000. The painting, according to the catalogue entry, is one of the artist's "dream" series that are "among the most radical in the artist's entire oeuvre," and "they strongly influenced the color-field painters working in America during the late 1940s and 1950s, including William Baziotes, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still."

Lot 39, "Le soleil rouge ronge l'araignée," is a strong oil on canvas by Miró that was painted in 1948. It measures 29 7/8 by 37 3/4 inches and has an ambitious estimate of $6,000,000 to $8,000,000. It sold for $7,744,000.

Lot 48, "Grand Composition avec Personnages," is a largebrush and India ink, oil, gouache, pencil and wash on paper laid down on board by Miró. Executed in 1937, it measures 29 1/2 by 41 1/4 inches and has a modest estimate of $700,000 to $900,000. It sold for $822,400.

Lot 54 is a excellent oil on canvas by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) of sculptures in his studio. It measures 23 3/4 by 18 3/4 inches and was painted in 1950. It has an estimate of $700,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $1,528,000. While Giacometti is best known for his scrawny and knobby bronze sculptures, his paintings are, at least to this observer, far more satisfying works of art for their sense of spaciousness, air of mystery and composition. They are the very antithesis of the meaningless scrawls of Cy Twombly.

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is the subject of a major exhibition this fall at the Neue Gallerie and Lot 42, "Sitzender Frauenakt," is a superb and interesting example of his work. "By 1914," the catalogue entry noted, "when Sitzender Frauenakt was executed, schiele had largely abandoned the angular, two-dimensional style derived from his Jugendstil background and had begun to depict the human body in a fleshier, more volumetric manner. It has a modest estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. It sold for $665,600.

Pierre-August Renoir (1841-1919) was a very prolific and uneven Impressionist painter whose reputation has not been helped in recent years by the skads of quite bad small sketches that continually crop up on the auction block. Lot 24, "Nu allongé sur un divan," is a small and very lovely study of a naked woman lying on a sofa much in the manner of Velasquez's great "The Rokeby Venus." An oil on canvas, it only measures 11 1/2 by 17 inches and is a fine example of why Renoir can be richly satisfying. Executed in 1893, it has a conservative estimate of $900,000 to $1,200,000. The catalogue entry notes that this work "is testatment both to the artist's expertiseat rendering the female form and his profound admiration for the art of the old masters." The lot was withdrawn.

In recent years, a number of fine landscapes by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) have appeared on the auction market and they hopefully will spark an exhibition as his landscapes are quite interesting and very dynamic. Lot 21, "Chaumière en Normandie," is a good example. An oil on canvas, it measures 29 1/8 by 23 1/4 inches. Executed in 1885, it has a very modest estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. Vincent Van Gogh would have liked this work very much. It sold for $744,000.

Gustave Caillebotte is a French Impressionist painter whose market values have soared in recent years and Lot 20, "Le parc de la propriété Caillebotte à Yerres," is a good example of his unusual compositions. An oil on canvas that measures 25 5/8 by 36 1/4 inches, it was painted in 1875. It has a modest estimate of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000, probably reflecting its less than vibrant palette. It sold for $1,808,000.

"Although at first glance this view of the park might seem nondescript, it is in fact another example of Caillebotte's penchant for surprising compositions. He has populated the foreground with two figures, they are pushed dramtically to the canvas' edge and turn their back to the viewer. They are painted in gray tones, complemented by a few yellow highlights in their respective straw hats.....The figures in the present composition gaze behond the lawn, through an opening the house in the background. The pink-gray brushstrokes of the path's foreground, which shade into a purplish blue, are horizontal, while those of he yellow-green grass are vertical. The vibrant carmine of the floral border is further animated by cross hatched strokes that lend it texture. The hues of the lawn in the middle ground are uniformly applied, but the details in the flower bed as well as the foliage, suggest a variety of specimens which stand out against the clear gray sky and in turn introduce a certain vivacity into this otherwise intentionally restrained iage. The treatment of the surface in the present work can be compared to Monet's oeuvre prior to 1870, which featured the same clarity of contrast and economy of means. There is, however, a notable difference - at no time did Caillbotte allow his hand to take pleasure in free brushstrokes," the catalogue entry for this lot maintained.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was beloved by most of his Impressionist contemporaries and yet many of his paintings that have come up at auction in recent years have tended to be somewhat drab and undramatic. This auction not only has a fine landscape by Pissarro, see above, but a lovely painting of a child playing a drum in a garden, Lot 19. An oil on canvas, it measures 21 7/8 by 19 1/8 inches. It was executed 1877 and has a very modest estimate of $900,000 to $1,400,000 given the fact that it is extremely impressionistic and is a classic subject. It sold for $1,024,000.

Lot 43, "Le Baiser," is a plaster sculpture of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) that was conceived in 1907-8 and cast shortly thereafter. It has been consigned form the collection of Edward R. Broida and has an estimate of $3,000,000 to $4,000,000. It is 11 inches high. It sold for $3,600,000.

Another work from the same collection is Lot 45, "Sculpture de silence, Corneille," by Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966). A 36-inch-high white marble sculpture, it was executed in 1964 and has an estimate of $900,000 to $1,200,000. It sold for $1,472,000.

Lot 4 is an early still life of apples and cakes by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). An oil on canvas, it measures 18 1/8 by 21 3/4 inches and was executed circa 1873-7. It has been consigned by the heirs to the Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie in Paris, which had obtained it from Victor Chocquet of Paris, one of Cézanne's earliest and most important collectors. It has a very modest estimate of $3,500,000 to $4,500,000 that probably reflects the fact that its brushstrokes are a bit muddled in comparison with his finest still-lifes as can be seen when compared with the Cézanne still life that sold at Sotheby's May 10, 1999 that had been consigned by Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney and sold for $60,500,200! (see The City Review article). This lot sold for $10,320,000 to a European private collector.

Lot 40, "Le matin," a sculpture by Henri Laurens sold for $1,472,000, a new world auction record for Laurens.

Lot 45, "Sculpture de silence, Corneille," a sculpture by Jean (Hans) Arp, sold for $1,472,000, a new world auction record for an Arp sculpture.