US$150 million Modigliani nude tipped to top season’s auction prices
Painting, once owned by casino mogul Steve Wynn, to be star lot at Sotheby’s New York sale, with auctions held in May poised to be biggest on record
Irish bloodstock billionaire John Magnier is selling an Amedeo Modigliani nude worth an estimated US$150 million – the most for any work of art at auction this season, according to people familiar with the matter.
The 1917 Nu couche (sur le cote gauche) depicts a reclining nude woman from behind, one leg bent, looking calmly over her shoulder at the viewer – a pose almost identical to La Grande Odalisque by Ingres from a century earlier.
The piece, previously owned by casino mogul Steve Wynn, will be the star lot of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art sale on May 14 in New York.
The May auction season is poised to be the biggest on record, driven by Christie’s offering a trove of masterpieces from the estate of David Rockefeller.
The top end of the art market has seen a period of unrestrained activity, with global art sales ringing up US$63.7 billion in 2017 – a 12 per cent increase from a year earlier.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for US$450.3 million in November, the most expensive work ever sold.
“This is among the greatest modern paintings in private hands,” Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s co-head of Impressionist and modern art, said of the Modigliani.
“The scale, the power, the subtlety, the fine level of finish – it’s something he really threw himself into. He was painting it as a masterpiece.“