For decades, the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection was one of the great mysteries of the art market – its existence known, but the works themselves never detailed or seen in public. Now, Sotheby’s has unveiled the collection in London ahead of its November 18 auction in New York, where it is estimated to fetch around $450m.
For Philip Hook, author of The Ultimate Trophy: How the Impressionist Painting Conquered the World, who spent decades at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the collection’s mystery was a continuous thread. “It was [nicknamed] the El Dorado in South America, but no one knew what was in it. So now for this to be revealed, it is tremendously exciting,” he says at an exclusive first preview of the collection. “The collectors did not lend the pictures. You wouldn’t have seen them in the temporary exhibitions or in the great museums of the world,” he adds.
Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art, agrees that the collection’s hidden history is part of its appeal. “What’s incredible is that nobody has ever seen these pictures before, and yet they are instantly familiar. Most people will recognize these artists, so that gives [this collection] that iconic status. ”
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At the center of the sale are two paintings that are on par to set new auction records for their respective artists. Vincent van Gogh’s Chataignier en fleurs roses et blanches is estimated at around $180m, while Paul Cézanne’s Arlequin carries an estimate of approximately $120m.
Van Gogh painted Chataignier en fleurs roses et blanches in May 1890, shortly after leaving the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Rémy and arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he would spend the final two months of his life. Newman describes it as “one of the great masterpieces of his mature period” remaining in private hands.
Cézanne’s Arlequin is similarly rare. It is one of just two paintings from the artist’s sequence of 15 late figure paintings that remain in private hands, with the others held in museums.
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Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s vice chairman and head of Impressionist & Modern Art, Americas, adds: “For a generation that has known these paintings only through the pages of catalogues raisonnés, they have become almost mythical.”
The 12-piece collection extends well beyond its two headline works. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s En Canot (Jeune fille à la barque) is estimated at $25m to $30m, while Camille Pissarro’s Parisian streetscape La Place du Théâtre-Français, soleil d’après-midi en hiver carries an estimate of $30m to $40m. Edgar Degas’s pastel Avant la course is expected to fetch $20m to $30m. None of the three has previously been offered at auction.
The remaining works trace the wider evolution of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, from Claude Monet’s Le Jardin des Tuileries and Alfred Sisley’s La Seine à Port-Marly to a rare Gauguin still life painted during his final years in Tahiti, a Toulouse-Lautrec portrait, and two pioneering Fauve works by André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.
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The collection was largely assembled in the 1970s by Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Blaquier de Arrieta, who, as collectors, returned to London each year. Seven of the works now heading to auction, including those by Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas and Gauguin, were acquired from Lefevre Gallery on Bruton Street.
It was an era when major Impressionist works could still be acquired by private collectors, rather than almost exclusively by museums and institutions. As Hook puts it, the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection belongs to “the golden age of Impressionist collecting, in the ’70s and ’80s, when there were still really great masterpieces to be had.”
“There was a time when you could walk into a top gallery in London or New York and, over a few years, build something of real museum quality. You simply can’t do that now, at any price,” says Hook. “What strikes me most is that the Blaquier-Arrieta Collection doesn’t feel like a private collection at all. It feels like a small museum, a miniature Musée d’Orsay, now opening its doors for the very first time.”
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Its appearance at auction also comes at a moment when interest in the highest end of the Impressionist and Modern market has intensified, with masterpiece prices setting new benchmarks in successive seasons of sales. Newman points to last year’s Leonard Lauder collection as evidence of this appetite. Led by Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, which sold for $236.4m, the collection generated $527.5m at its main evening sale, with three major Klimt paintings accounting for almost $391m.
“I would anticipate that we will have competition from all the regions of the world,” says Newman, pointing to established collectors in the US, Japan, Taiwan, the Middle East, and Europe, alongside newer wealth across the US, China, Singapore, Indonesia, and Korea.
“They know that these works have the endorsement of having stood the test of time,” Newman says. “These are tried-and-tested blue chip. That’s very important, especially in these uncertain macroeconomic political times.”
