People walk past "Homme et femme au bouquet" by Pablo Picasso during a preview of Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Art auction in New York. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson.

Sotheby’s autumn Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York on 2 November 2010 will present a superb offering of works across the period. From an early painting by Eugène Boudin from 1868 to a Pablo Picasso canvas from the 1970s, the sale features classic Impressionist paintings, key Modern works, tremendous sculpture and powerful German Expressionist canvases. Highlights will include important works by Modigliani, Matisse, Monet, Rodin and Picasso, among many others. Prior to the auction, works from both the Evening and Day Sales will be exhibited at Sotheby’s New York galleries beginning 29 October. Highlights will also be exhibited at Sotheby’s London from 11 –15 October.

The cover lot of the Evening Sale catalogue is Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine), the finest painting by Amedeo Modigliani to appear on the market in years (est. in excess of $40 million)*. The work belongs to the artist’s most important series of nudes, all painted in 1917. While Modigliani began painting nudes in 1908, it was not until he abandoned his pursuit of sculpture in 1914 that he developed the unique style exemplified by La Belle Romaine. Modigliani evokes a voluptuous sensuality through his palette of amber and crimson tones, the model’s pose and the intimate setting. The work and artist both have a distinguished history at Sotheby’s. La Belle Romaine last appeared on the market in 1999, when it sold at Sotheby’s New York for $16.8 million, a world record price for any work by Modigliani at the time. More recently, Sotheby’s set the current record for a painting by Modigliani in 2004 with our sale of Jeanne Hébuterne (devant une porte) for $31.4 million.

MASTERWORKS SOLD TO BENEFIT YOUNGARTS, THE CORE PROGRAM OF THE
NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ADVANCEMENT IN THE ARTS
Two highlights of the sale will be offered to support YoungArts, the core program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA). Le Bassin aux Nymphéas is a spectacular canvas from Claude Monet's iconic water lilies series, a defining motif for the artist in the last thirty years of his life (est. $20/30 million). The canvas is one of the large-format works from this seminal series, completed in conjunction with his grand opus Les Grandes Décorations, now in the Orangerie in Paris. In these large-scale works Monet moved away from a realistic depiction of the pond by bringing the viewer closer to it, hovering above the shifting colors and tones of its reflective surface. Monet’s palette is more vibrant here than his earlier works of this subject and his handling is decidedly more fluid. Le Bassin was acquired by the Reader’s Digest Collection in 1956 and sold at Sotheby’s New York in 1998 for $9.9 million, where it was purchased by the present owner.

The second work sold to benefit YoungArts is Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau), one of the first portraits Amedeo Modigliani painted of his great love (est. $9/12 million). Jeanne Hébuterne was 19 when she met Modigliani while studying art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. For the next three years until Modigliani’s death in 1920 and Jeanne’s tragic suicide the following day, she would be his constant companion, immortalized in a number of portraits that are among the most powerful compositions of the artist’s oeuvre. Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau) was completed during the first intense months of the couple’s relationship. The excitement that the artist must have felt is evident in his rendering. The surface texture appears to be almost jewel-encrusted, and Jeanne’s deep-blue eyes possess a mesmerizing quality.