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Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché Sells for $157.2 Million In Sotheby’s New York Salesroom

HIGHEST AUCTION PRICE IN SOTHEBY’S HISTORY
Modigliani Is One of Only Three Artists to Break the $150 Million Auction Barrier
NEARLY 6 TIMES THE PAINTING’S LAST PURCHASE PRICE IN 2003

FURTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF TONIGHT’S ONGOING SALE OF IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART:
A Dreamy 1932 Image of Pablo Picasso’s Golden Muse Achieves $36.9 Million
*A portion of the proceeds will go to charity through The Sue J. Gross Foundation*

Claude Monet’s Magnificent Matinée sur la Seine Brings $20.6 Million

Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) (1917) (estimate in excess of $150 million)

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Painted a century ago, Nu couché is the greatest work from the iconic series in which Modigliani reinvented the nude for the Modern era. Upon their debut exhibition in 1917, these striking and sensual images stopped traffic – quite literally – and prompted the police to close the show. Today, the series is recognized as one of the seminal achievements in Modern painting. The shock and awe that Modigliani’s nudes continue to elicit was evident most recently during Tate Modern’s celebrated retrospective of the artist’s work that included Nu couché. 

In addition to being the finest example from the series, Nu couché is distinguished further as the largest painting of Modigliani’s entire oeuvre – measuring nearly 58 inches / 147 centimeters across – and the only one of his horizontal nudes to contain the entire figure within the canvas.

The majority of the 22 reclining nudes from the series are found in museums, with particular depth in the United States: examples reside in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and more. Outside of the United States, institutions with reclining nudes include the Long Museum in Shanghai and The Courtauld Gallery in London. 

Nu couché was acquired by the present owner at auction in 2003 for $26.9 million.
 

Claude Monet’s Matinée sur la Seine (1896) (estimate $18–25 million)

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A meditation in sky and water, trees and shrubs, reflection and suspension, Matinée sur la Seine is a daring landscape from the artist’s late career – now one of the most sought-after periods of Monet’s oeuvre – that looks forward to both the 20th Century and Abstraction.

Painted in 1896, the radical work was created on Monet’s rather unconventional ‘studio-boat’, which the artist moored mid-river at the confluence of the Epte and the Seine during the summers of 1896 and 1897. Rising early each morning, Monet would travel downstream on his boat and work on numerous canvases as the sun rose, capturing the effects of the lightening sky and contrasts between the water, woods and clouds. As the light changed, he would switch canvas, working on each for no more than seven minutes each day. 

Pablo Picasso’s Le Repos (1932) (estimate $25–35 million) 

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Pablo Picasso’s Le Repos from 1932 is a stunning and intimate depiction of the artist’s ‘golden muse’, Marie-Thérèse Walter, which captures the rapturous desire of his greatest compositions. The sumptuous canvas is appearing at auction during a sensational time for related works from Picasso’s oeuvre: Tate Modern’s first solo exhibition of Picasso’s work, The Ey Exhibition: Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy, opened in London this spring.

The frank avowal of Picasso’s love for Marie-Thérèse is particularly evident in this work. He depicts his serene model asleep, her head in Grecian profile, and resting on her interlaced fingers. Devoid of the attributes that often accompany her in other compositions, in the present work Marie-Thérèse’s striking facial features are the main focus of the composition. Picasso embraces not only a vibrant palette of primary colors such as yellow, red and green, but also employs sumptuous and curvaceous brushstrokes to convey Marie-Thérèse’s full, passive and golden beauty, which had now become for him the personification of ripeness and fecundity.