It has become clearer in these past few years that the real battle between auction houses isn’t about results but in the race for consignments. Yesterday, Sotheby’s landed a knockout: the $400 million Leonard A. Lauder Collection, set to hit the rostrum during November’s New York marquee evening sales. Lauder—hailed as one of America’s great art collectors and benefactors, and a longtime patron of the Whitney—died this past June. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s were reportedly in negotiations to secure what is likely to be one of the most important troves coming to auction this year.
Leading the standalone 24-lot evening sale on November 18 is a Klimt masterpiece estimated in excess of $150 million, expected to surpass the artist’s previous record of $108.8 million (£85.3 million), also set at Sotheby’s when Dame mit Fächer (Lady with Fan) sold in London in June 2023. What better way to launch their new location at the Breuer Building, fresh off its renovation?
This particular Klimt is one of the finest full-length portraits by the Austrian master; it depicts the young Elisabeth Lederer, daughter of Klimt’s greatest patrons. The painting has never before appeared on the open market and epitomizes the aesthetic of Vienna’s Golden Age, in which youth, beauty, color and ornamental splendor are fused together in a portrait of pure elegance, which Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman of Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide, pointed out in the statement accompanying the announcement.
Executed between 1914 and 1916, Porträt der Elisabeth Lederer also reflects the influence of golden age exoticism—the fascination with the East through Japonaiserie and Chinoiserie, which here is revealed not only in the flatness of the composition, structured around sinuous lines of Lederer dressed in Poiret-inspired Viennese fashion, but also in the Asia-inspired characters that float mysteriously around her, echoing Klimt’s passion for Chinese and Japanese artifacts and textiles.
The work was confiscated by the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz in 1939 and restituted to the Lederer heirs after the war in 1946. Later acquired from the family by Serge Sabarsky, an early champion of German and Austrian art in America, the portrait entered Lauder’s collection in the mid-1980s.
Notably, this is not the only Klimt coming to auction at Sotheby’s as part of the Lauder collection. The sale also includes an exquisite example of his floral-period landscapes, Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) (1908), a work not far in spirit from the version held by MoMA and likely exhibited in the Austrian pavilion at the first International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 1910. With an estimate in excess of $80 million, the painting also makes its auction debut following a controversial restitution claim that led the Musée d’Orsay to return it to the heirs of Nora Stiasny, née Zuckerkandl. It later passed through Sabarsky’s hands before entering Lauder’s collection in 1985.
Last but not least, the sale will feature Waldhag bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee), a depiction of an undisturbed idyll from 1916 that, with its more expressionist brushstrokes, shows the influence of Van Gogh. Believed to be the last surviving landscape Klimt ever painted, it carries an estimate in excess of $70 million.
Additional highlights from the sale include an emotionally charged and psychologically intense evocation of a Nordic midsummer night by Edvard Munch, Sankthansnatt Johannisnacht (Midsummer Night) (1901–03). Characterized by a more luminous and saturated palette than his usual dusky tones, it has an estimated value in excess of $20 million. Also in the sale is one of the most significant groups of bronzes by Matisse to come to auction in recent years, with six sculptures expected to fetch around $30 million in total. Last but not least is an immaculate graphite grid by Agnes Martin, The Garden, which demonstrates her mastery of geometry and radical approach to painting. Previously held in the private collection of visionary curator and collector Samuel Wagstaff—a fact that may have spared it from destruction, unlike many of Martin’s early works—the piece entered the Lauder collection in 1979, where it has remained for nearly half a century.
News of the Lauder auction came just days after the Guardian reported that Sotheby’s had more than doubled its losses compared to the previous year, reaching $248 million in a sluggish art market. As the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report revealed, auction houses were hit hardest by the downturn, with a 20 percent drop in total sales—bringing them to their lowest level since 2020. This was largely due to a sharp decline in the high-end segment and the growing difficulty in securing top consignments, as owners have been reluctant to part with trophy works during a time of geopolitical and economic uncertainty.
The question now is whether these marquee estates can inject energy and restore confidence after a season of sluggishness, particularly on the auction side. The dynamic floor activity and early sales at the 2025 Armory Show suggested that American collectors were ready to start buying again, though perhaps at lower price points.
Sotheby’s Pritzker collection sale and Christie’s Weis and Wynn consignments
Today (Sept. 16), Sotheby’s announced that the collection of Chicago patrons Cindy and Jay Pritzker will also be offered this November, with masterpieces featured in their Modern Evening Auction and additional works slated for sales across Books and Manuscripts, Sculpture and Works of Art, Chinese Works of Art and Design.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because the couple established the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979—now regarded as the Nobel of architecture. Over the decades, the prize has spotlighted the talents of Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers, Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, Hans Hollein, Diébédo Francis Kéré, Tadao Ando and Shigeru Ban.
Leading the sale of the Pritzker collection is Van Gogh’s still life Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887), a portrait of books by an artist who read voraciously, estimated to sell for $40 million. Other Modernist highlights include a rare triptych by Henri Matisse, Léda et le cygne (1944-46), with an estimate of $7-10 million, and Paul Gauguin’s evocative rural landscape La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache (1889), painted during his Nabis period in Pont-Aven and estimated to sell for $6-8 million.
Additional works revealed with the announcement include Max Beckmann’s epic Der Wels (Catfish), estimated at $5-7 million; Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Hallesches Tor, Berlin (Halle Gate, Berlin) (1913), estimated at $3-5 million; a Camille Pissarro Impressionist canvas from his decade-long second sojourn in Pontoise ($1.2-1.8 million); and a late large-scale outdoor sculpture by Joan Miró ($4-6 million). For the subsequent sales in other categories, Sotheby’s will also offer the Pritzkers’ extraordinary portolan chart by Petrus Roselli from 1447 (£700,000-1 million) and a rare Tang Dynasty dappled dark-brown glazed pottery horse ($400,000-800,000).
Meanwhile, Christie’s announced last week it had secured the collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis, which is also heading to the rostrum for the November marquee sales with an estimate in excess of $180 million. Leading the dedicated single-owner sale of the first 18 lots is Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), with a $50 million estimate, to be followed by works going on the block in the 20th Century Evening Sale (dates to be confirmed).
The full consignment comprises 80 artworks, all drawn from the Philadelphia home and New York apartment of the prominent collecting couple, who made their fortune through the family-operated food company Weis Markets. According to Christie’s, in an era before the internet or social media, Weis meticulously researched the art world—reading auction catalogs, consulting a select circle of trusted advisors and visiting galleries in New York on weekends and in the U.K. and France while on vacation—to determine what he and his wife wanted to collect and live with.
Among the masterpieces long held in the collection and now returning to the market is Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red and Blue (1939-41), estimated at $20-30 million and painted at a pivotal moment just before the war and his move to the New York metropolitan area, where the Boogie Woogie rhythm would soon animate his austerely ascetic abstractions. Other highlights include an early Fauvist-style painting by Braque and a market-favored Picasso portrait of his lifelong muse Marie-Thérèse, with an estimate in the region of $40 million.
Christie’s has also secured the collection of casino magnate Steve Wynn’s ex-wife, Elaine Wynn, who died this past April. Known for her extraordinary taste and for the collection she built both independently and with her former husband, Wynn’s estate is estimated in excess of $75 million. Nine of the top works will be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale, two in the 21st Century Evening Sale and the remainder in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale.
The highlights span centuries and styles but share the uncompromising quality Wynn demanded from each artist—from J.M.W. Turner’s poetic masterpiece Ehrenbreitstein (estimate $12-18 million) and Seurat’s exquisite Parisian view to postwar icons including Lucian Freud’s culminating self-portrait ($15-25 million) and Richard Diebenkorn’s radiant Ocean Park #40 ($15-25 million). On the more feminine side of the collection, standouts include Joan Mitchell’s breathtaking, sunflower-inspired riot of color and gesture ($12–18 million) and a luminous gold piece by Olga de Amaral, coming to auction following a steep rise in both institutional and market acclaim.
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