A quartet of masterpieces by Claude Monet, Paul Signac, Edgar Degas, and Fernand Léger will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s London this spring. The paintings are part of the house’s Modern and Contemporary evening sale on March 4 and have a combined high estimate of £24 million.
Monet’s Maison de Jardinier (1884) spearheads the group. It was painted during the artist’s ten-week sojourn on the Italian riviera and conveys the famous garden of Francesco Moreno in Bordighera. Sotheby’s has slapped an £8.5 million high estimate on the work. Paintings from Monet’s trip to Italy in 1884 rarely hit the market and several of the finest examples are held in museums including the Musée d’Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The other three paintings are Signac’s Marseille, Le Port (1934), Léger’s Les Hommes dans la Ville (1919)—both have a £6 million high estimate—and Degas’ Scène de Ballet (circa 1885), high estimate £3.5 million.
“This collection represents a powerfully concentrated capsule of the history of modernism, spanning Impressionism, Pointillism and Cubism,” Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman of both Europe and impressionist and modern art, told ARTnews. “Each work is a jewel, defined by exceptional quality, distinguished provenance, and an assured place within the canon of modern art. Anchoring the group is Monet’s outstandingly rare view of the Italian Riviera… once in the collection of John Singer Sargent. Its appearance on the market coincides with the centenary of Monet’s passing, a moment prompting renewed attention across museums and institutions worldwide.”
Signac’s Marseille, le port comes to auction amid renewed institutional focus on neo-impressionism, following a recent exhibition at London’s National Gallery and ahead of the Courtauld Institute of Art’s forthcoming show dedicated to the movement’s leading figure, Georges Seurat.
The quartet of paintings will be on public show at Sotheby’s New York from February 11 to 13 before landing in London on February 26. Works by Donald Judd, Edvard Munch, Lucio Fontana, and René Margritte will also feature in the Modern and Contemporary evening auction.
