A Picasso From 1932 Asks $120 Million at Auction

livemint.com:

Sotheby’s just landed the chance to sell the undisputed star of the fall auction season: A royal blue, green and red portrait of Pablo Picasso’s young mistress curled up in a chair, “Woman with a Watch," estimated to top $120 million this November. The 1932 portrait hails from the estimated $400 million estate of Emily Fisher Landau, a New York collector who died in March at age 102. Fisher Landau’s 120-piece trove includes major examples by Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol, so market watchers will be closely following the estate’s performance to gauge global bidder interest during the current slump.

The Picasso, which carries the artist’s second-highest asking price ever, will come under the most scrutiny. “Masterpieces are incredibly market resilient," Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s head of global fine art, said. Lampley confirmed the house won the consignment in part by guaranteeing Fisher Landau’s heirs that the house itself would buy her pieces, including the Picasso, if no other bidders stepped up during the Nov.

8-9 sales. To break Picasso’s record, “Woman with a Watch" will need to sell for more than the $179.4 million paid in 2015 for a 1955 harem scene, “Women of Algiers (Version O)." Collectors tend to pay a premium for Picasso’s works from the 1930s, with half of the artist’s top 10 priciest works hailing from that decade, according to auction database Artnet. Three date to the same year Sotheby’s example was painted: 1932, a seminal period in Picasso’s career when he was readying works for a retrospective and reveling in a secret love affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter.