This fall, Sotheby’s will open its first auction season inside the Breuer building with a collection that’s never been seen outside a Chicago living room. Cindy and Jay Pritzker, known for hotels and the Pritzker Architecture Prize, also built a private cache of paintings that stayed out of view for decades. In November, parts of it will head to auction with an overall estimate north of $120 million.
The lead lot is Vincent van Gogh’s Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes), an 1887 painting of paperback novels stacked on a table. Van Gogh made only nine still lifes of books, and just two are still privately owned. This one hung in the Pritzkers’ home library, a fitting echo of Cindy’s long involvement with Chicago’s public libraries. At close to $40 million, it is among the most important van Gogh still lifes to reach the market in years.
Paul Gauguin’s La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache (1889) shows a cowherd against the coast of Brittany. It’s estimated at $6 million–$8 million and comes from the Pont-Aven years when Gauguin’s brushwork got bolder and his colors hotter—the same period that set him on the path to Tahiti.
Henri Matisse’s Léda et le cygne (1944–46) is a six-foot-high triptych made for a Paris diplomat’s house. It occupied Matisse for three years. A swan coils around Leda in the central panel, flanked by deep red side panels scratched with leaf motifs. Sotheby’s puts it at $7 million–$10 million.
Vincent van Gogh, Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes)
Max Beckmann’s Der Wels (Catfish) (1929), valued at $5 million–7 million, is an allegory showing a fisherman who wrestles with a giant catfish while women look on in shock. Beckmann, living in Paris at the time, used the fish as a stand-in for both vitality and menace—life’s appetites in one muscular image.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Hallesches Tor, Berlin (1913) captures the city in motion, with trams, bridges, and twisting streets rendered in green and blue. At $3 million–$5 million, it’s the largest Berlin cityscape by Kirchner still outside a museum.
Other works in the sale include Joan Miró’s late bronze La Mère Ubu (est. $4 million–$6 million), Camille Pissarro’s river view Bords de l’Oise à Pontoise (1872, est. $1.2 million–$1.8 million), and a 15th-century sea chart by Petrus Roselli.
