London’s Summer Sales Test the Market with Reclining Nudes

Provocative takes on the female figure by Pablo Picasso, Tamara de Lempicka, and Jenny Saville—collectively estimated at up to £25 million—will headline London’s major auctions this week.

The summer auction season launches on Tuesday with Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary sale once again featuring more than 52 lots, including 14 valued above £1 million, followed by counterpart in-person sales at Christie’s and Phillips on Thursday.

Facing a buyer’s market, auction houses have adopted divergent strategies—Sotheby’s leaning on canonical European modernists and institutionally backed women artists (with no headlining Basquiat), while Christie’s opts for a more contemporary selection under £1 million. 

Leading Sotheby’s auction on Tuesday is a late Picasso reclining nude, Nu assis dans un fauteuil (1964), of his last wife Jacqueline Roque who he painted at his home in Mougins, Southeastern France, with an irrevocable bid and £6–9 million estimate.

With the same estimate, art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka’s 1927 female nude La Belle Rafaëla is coming to market from a private British collection following its presentation in the artist’s recent survey at de Young Museum San Francisco and Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Cataloguer Furio Rinaldi notes Lempicka was the first woman to reference and attempt to modernise the female nude canon, which had traditionally been the domain of male painters. A similar work by the artist sold for $13.3 million (USD) at Sotheby’s New York in 2019. 

Jenny Saville’s towering nude Juncture (1994) follows with an estimate of £5 to £7 million, priced within the range of its last result of £5.2 million in 2019. The work first sold for £457,000 in 2009. 

This estimate positions the British painter, whose critically acclaimed survey just opened at London’s National Portrait Gallery, in the same range as an 1884 Monet landscape of the summertime hillside path along the Normandy coast from a private American collection. 

Jean Michel-Basquiat’s 1981 drawing Untitled (Indian Head) comes fifth with an estimate of £4 to £6 million, while at Phillips, Basquiat’s 1984 portrait MP, of stylist Michael Patterson, will lead the house’s sale with an estimate of £3.5 to £5.5 million.

Notable lots at Sotheby’s further include a David Hockney still life Two Sunflowers Laying on a Table from 1996 (£2–3 million), Elizabeth Peyton’s 1996 portrait of Oasis musicians Liam + Noel (Gallagher) (£1.5–2 million), and Nicolas Party’s Still Life (£600,000–800,000).

Finally, rising artists featured across auctions include British painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Christie’s and Phillips (estimates: £450,000–700,000) and Japanese painter Yu Nishimura (estimates: £20,000–70,000), who has work listed at all three houses. —[O]

Main image: Tamara de Lempicka, The Beautiful Rafaëla (La belle Rafaëla) (1927). Oil on canvas. 64.77 x 90.80 cm. © 2024 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC/ADAGP, Paris/Artists Rights Society, New York. Banque d'Images, ADAGP/Art Resource, NY. Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.