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Sotheby’s $304M Modern Evening Auction Confirms the Market Has Found Its Footing

Led by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and strong demand from Asia, the May 19 sale extended the house’s May momentum.

Anchored by top consignments, fresh-to-market museum-grade masterpieces and excellent provenance, Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on May 19 closed with a $304 million result, a 98 percent sell-through rate across 45 lots and more than double the total achieved in the equivalent sale in November. The result brings the running combined total for Sotheby’s marquee sales to $839.6 million, following the $433 million achieved by the Mnuchin collection and the Now & Contemporary Evening Auction last week and a successful, buoyant Contemporary Day Auction that achieved $108 million, with 93 percent of 350 lots finding buyers.

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The star of the night was the fresh-to-market Henri Matisse, La Chaise Lorraine, from the Barbier-Müller collection. Unseen on the market for more than a century, it was last exhibited at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in the 2024-25 show “Matisse: Invitation to the Voyage.” Chased by four bidders on the phones for more than 10 minutes, it eventually sold to a buyer bidding with Sotheby’s senior specialist Francis Asquith for $48.4 million against an estimate in excess of $25 million—the second-highest price for any painting by the artist sold at auction. A few lots later, another work by Henri Matisse, La Séance du matin—a lively, harmonious scene of the artist’s favored model of this decade, Henriette Darricarrère, bathed in the Mediterranean—sold to a collector in Asia at its $20 million low estimate.

Also leading the evening was a group of fresh-to-market masterpieces from the collection of “last Surrealist” Enrico Donati, a deeply personal trove assembled by a close friend of the movement’s main participants. Three works from the collection generated a combined total of $58.9 million, bringing the running total for the Donati collection to an above-estimate $63.2 million, with more works to come in the Modern Day Auction and additional African and Oceanic masks and artifacts set to be offered in the Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas sale on June 18. The highly anticipated Pablo Picasso, Arlequin (Buste) (1909), soared to $42.6 million, surpassing its estimate of more than $40 million. The artist’s signature early Cubist work was acquired by Donati through dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and remained in his collection for more than six decades. Another highlight was Wassily Kandinsky’s Rote Tiefe (1925), painted at the height of his Bauhaus period, squarely met its $12-18 million estimate, landing at $14.5 million with fees, secured by both a guarantee and an irrevocable bid. Later in the auction, Yves Tanguy’s Aux Aguets le jour also rapidly climbed past its high estimate of $1.2 million to sell for $1.8 million with fees. Donati and Tanguy were particularly close, having moved to New York together in 1939. The work was gifted directly from the artist to Donati in exchange for one of his drawings.

The evening kicked off with a pair of “Carcasse” Chenets by Diego Giacometti from the Wingate collection, surpassing its high estimate after being pursued by five bidders to achieve $512,000 with fees. The result was immediately followed by Wassily Kandinsky’s signature pastel-toned Zwei........

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