By Christine Philip
Attention to all art lovers – Christie’s NYC is auctioning the Roger Sant collection during Fall Marquee Week this November. The entire collection, which includes 30 works, spans from post-impressionism through the post-war era. Proceeds will benefit the Summit Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to create a world where people can thrive and nature can flourish. The collection includes works by Paul Gauguin and Joan Mitchell and is estimated to be worth at least $50 million. Roger Sant, Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Virginia-based AES Corporation, is the Co-Founder and Chairman of The Summit Foundation
Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (Christie’s estimate: $10,000,000 – $15,000,000) is a diptych celebrating the importance of mark-making. It employs a compelling combination of muscular brushwork and subtle intricacies of color. Mitchell created the work in 1989, the same year she organized what would be the final major museum retrospective held during her lifetime—a period of intense personal reflection. Recently, Mitchell was subject of a major US retrospective at both SFMOMA and Baltimore Museum of Art, which will open 5 October 2022 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris alongside Monet – Mitchell, on view through 27 February 2023.
Paul Gauguin’s Pêcheur et baigneurs sur l’Aven (Christie’s estimate: $6,000,000 – $8,000,000) was painted in late summer of 1888; it depicts a fisherman and several intrepid bathers on the banks of the River Aven in Brittany. This is not the only Gauguin canvas devoted to this scene. Earlier in the same summer, he painted the same river from a nearly identical vantage point—however, the earlier example took a more traditional approach in arranging a landscape. In contrast, the painting on offer demonstrates a more extreme compression of three-dimensional space, and a sharp, oblique perspective of the edge of the mountain leading to the river. The composition is also much more abruptly cropped, resulting in a more radically-constructed view. It represents a turning point in Gauguin’s career, during which he began to develop his own singular approach to modern art.
Images courtesy of Christie’s
