Christie’s London will offer a selection of modern and contemporary works from Belgian collecting couple Roger and Josette Vanthournout during its March marquee sales week. The couple collected for six decades, amassing holdings ranging from Symbolism, Belgian Expressionism and Surrealism to post war avant-garde, Minimalism, and modern and contemporary British art.
The collection bears an overall estimate of £40 million ($53.8 million), and will come to the block in a March 5 evening sale, a March 6 daytime sale, and an online sale running February 25–March 12.
Roger Vanthournout was trained in design and decoration and founded a furniture manufacturing business. Josette Vanthournout was a painter. They began to travel widely in the 1950s, at first collecting Chinese ceramics and Flemish Expressionism but later shifting to acquire Surrealism, Minimalism, and postwar art.
“Spanning multiple decades and movements, the collection reflects a bold and deeply personal vision of 20th- and 21st-century art,” says Oliver Cau, the house’s deputy chairman of Impressionist and modern art, in press materials. “Begun in the mid -1950s, it is inseparable from the story of Roger and Josette themselves: a designer and a painter who collected together for more than half a century. Their postmodernist home in Belgium became a true Gesamtkunstwerk, conceived as a total work of art in which architecture, design and fine art existed in constant dialogue. Rooted in Belgium’s long tradition as a cultural crossroads, their outward-looking approach—shaped by travel and enduring curiosity—resulted in a collection encompassing more than 100 artists.”
Two works share the sale’s highest estimate, of £3.5 to £5.5 million ($4.7 to $7.4 million). Belgian Surrealist René Magritte’s painting La plaine de l’air (1940) shows a tree composed of one enormous leaf, towering over a mountain landscape against a cloudy sky. It was shown at Galerie Dietrich in Brussels the following year. The piece comes to market as Magritte’s work has been in high demand; his auction record of $121.2 million was set in 2024 at Christie’s New York for the work L’empire des lumières (1949).
Henry Moore, Goslar Warrior (1973-74).
Christie’s
At the same price is British icon Henry Moore’s sculpture Goslar Warrior (1973–74), depicting a reclining male figure, a rarity in the artist’s oeuvre. It is one of a trio of sculptures, preceded by Warrior with Shield and Falling Warrior, both from the 1950s, showing a fighter’s demise. Moore was inspired by Greek sculpture after his travel to that country in 1951.
Pablo Picasso’s painting Nu debout et femmes assises (1939), is estimated at £3 to £5 million ($4 to $6.7 million). It dates to when he fled Paris with artist Dora Maar after the outbreak of the Second World War for the French coastal resort town of Royan. Maar is shown twice in shades of gray.
Pablo Picasso, Nu debout et femmes assises (1939).
Christie’s
Several pieces are estimated at £2 to £3 million ($2.7 to $4 million). Yayoi Kusama’s painting Infinity Nets (1960) was created shortly after she arrived in New York and comes from a series created between 1958 and 1962. Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Attese (1964) is one of the artist’s well-known works in which he slashed a canvas with a knife. Agnes Martin’s Untitled #17 (1996) was painted in Taos, New Mexico and has been shown at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. The artist would win the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale the next year.
Max Ernst’s painting Seestück (1921) bears an estimate of £1.5 to £2.5 million ($2 to $3.4 million) and depicts a desert landscape dominated by a giant samovar. It shows a Surrealist sensibility, years before the movement formally emerged.
Also on offer are notable works by Lynn Chadwick, Jean Dubuffet, Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan, and Antony Gormley.
Highlights from the collection will be on view at Christie’s Brussels on Januaray 27–28, at Christie’s Hong Kong from February 3–6, New York from February 10–13, Paris from February 18–20, and in London starting February 25.
Another group of Vanthournout works came to auction in 2006 at Sotheby’s New York, when 27 pieces all sold, “often at extremely high prices,” as the New York Times reported at the time, some setting auction records, including examples by Carl Andre and Robert Mangold.
