After years of legal battles, there are sure to be fireworks at Sotheby’s next month when a group of high-flying Impressionist paintings that have been returned to heirs by legendary merchant Ambroise Vollard makes his debut at the house’s big evening sale in New York.
The four works, including two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir—Marine Guernsey (1883) and Judgment of Paris (1908) – with Paul Cezanne brushwood (1890-1892) and Paul Gauguin Still life with mandolin (1885), will be offered on May 16.
The overall low/high estimate for the group is $11.5 million to $17.35 million. The works were exhibited at Sotheby’s Paris last week.
The group is led by Gauguin, which Sotheby’s calls one of its most important still lifes, and is estimated at $10-15 million, backed by a guarantee. Further adding to its provenance appeal, it hung for more than three decades in the Musée d’Orsay.
According to a statement from Sotheby’s, 1885 is the year the artist began to pursue his art full-time, moving away from the naturalism of the Impressionist movement and beginning to experiment with vibrant colors. His explorations during this period would eventually form the basis of the Post-Impressionist movement, which caught the attention of fellow artist Van Gogh. A few years later, he invited Gauguin to join him in Arles, in the south of France. It was around the same time that Vollard began to see Gauguin’s potential and became a key player in the development of his career, organizing major Gauguin exhibitions after the artist left for Tahiti in the 1890s.
The record for a Gauguin at auction is $105.7 million paid Maternity II (1899), an oil on burlap sold at Christie’s New York last fall as part of the famous Paul Allen collection. In 2015, a painting by Gauguin, Nafea Faa IpoipoOr When are you going to get married? (1892), which belonged to a Swiss collector, was reportedly sold privately to a museum in Qatar for $300 million.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, seaside landscape (circa 1884). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Elsewhere in Sotheby’s upcoming offerings: the Renoir landscape, seaside landscape, estimated at between $1 million and $1.5 million, and produced when the artist was at the height of his independence in 1884; a red chalk by Renoir representing the Greek myth, the Judgment of Paris, and entitled The Judgment of Paris (circa 1915), estimated between $300,000 and $500,000; and a watercolor and pencil on paper by Cézanne titled undergrowth (c. 1882-1884), which is estimated at $250,000 to $350,000.
Sotheby’s said the exhibition in its Paris gallery after years of legal wrangling had brought the works’ history full circle in the development of a common understanding of Impressionist and modern art.
Pierre-August Renoir, Judgment of Paris or The Judgment of Paris (circa 1915). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Vollard helped build the reputation of the most important artists of the time, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Gauguin, Van Gogh and others. Not only did he organize the first solo exhibitions of many of these artists, but he also supported them throughout their careers, establishing their legacy by publishing prints and illustrated books of their work and ensuring that their works placed in major institutional and private collections.
Vollard left behind some 6,000 works of art when he died in a car accident in 1939. As the Nazis invaded France the following year, his brother, Lucien Vollard, along with two French art experts, Étienne Bignou and Martin Fabiani, would have stolen numerous paintings from the dealer’s legacy.
Some of the artworks were sold to members of the Nazi Party, with whom Bignou and Fabiani had close ties; others were donated to German museums and dealers.
Paul Cézanne, undergrowth (1882-1884). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.
In 2013, the Vollard heirs requested the return of a total of seven works, including the four paintings sold the next month. The French state denied the claim, saying there was insufficient evidence that the coins had been stolen.
Eventually, the case made its way through the French court system, and in May 2022 a judge ruled that all four works by Cézanne, Gauguin and Renoir were Vollard’s property upon his death and should therefore belong to his heirs. The decision was later upheld by a French high court last November.
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