NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s is honored to announce The Roger Sant Collection will be sold during the Fall Marquee Week of sales taking place this November in New York. The collection spans from Post-Impressionism through the Post-War era. It is being sold for charity, with proceeds benefitting The Summit Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to a world where people can thrive and nature can flourish.
The collection in total consists of 30 works, with a group highlighting the 20th Century Evening Sale. It is led by two masterworks by Paul Gauguin and Joan Mitchell, painted more than a century apart. Additional works will be sold in the Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sales and the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale. In total, The Roger Sant Collection carries a low estimate of $50 million.
Roger Sant, Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Virginia-based AES Corporation, is the Co-Founder and Chairman of The Summit Foundation, an organization seeking to promote the health and well-being of the planet – its people and its natural environment – by achieving gender equality, protecting the earth’s biodiversity and making cities livable. The foundation has three core programs that provide support for the international empowerment of girls, the restoration of the Mesoamerican Reef ecosystem, and aim to radically improve the sustainability of cities in the United States.
Roger Sant remarks: “People can thrive and nature can flourish. At The Summit Foundation, we believe this to our core. For over 30 years, the foundation has been innovating to develop sustainable practices globally, with the mission of creating a better future for the planet and all its inhabitants. I am proud to present my collection at Christie’s this fall to raise funds to support the impactful work of the foundation.”
Sara Friedlander, Christie’s Deputy Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarks: “Spanning across over a century, Roger Sant’s collection begins with the Pont-Aven school and continues through the most important movements of Modern, Post War and Contemporary Art. Roger’s philanthropic generosity knows no bounds and included a 2019 transformational gift of Nabis pictures to the Phillips Collection. It is in this spirit of giving that we are most excited to share his extraordinary collection, including paintings by Nicholas de Stael, Fernand Leger, Wayne Thiebaud, Ellsworth Kelly as well as sculptures by Donald Judd and Isamu Noguchi. These works of art illustrate Roger's impeccable eye toward quality and beauty.”
Collection Highlights: 20th Century Evening Sale
Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (estimate : $10,000,000 – 15,000,000) is a diptych celebrating the importance of mark-making. It employs a compelling combination of muscular brushwork and subtle intricacies of color. Mitchell created the work in 1989, the same year she organized what would be the final major museum retrospective held during her lifetime—a period of intense personal reflection. Recently, Mitchell was subject of a major US retrospective at both SFMOMA and Baltimore Museum of Art, which will open 5 October 2022 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris alongside Monet – Mitchell, on view through 27 February 2023.
Paul Gauguin’s Pêcheur et baigneurs sur l’Aven (estimate : $6,000,000 – 8,000,000) was painted in late summer of 1888; it depicts a fisherman and several intrepid bathers on the banks of the River Aven in Brittany. This is not the only Gauguin canvas devoted to this scene. Earlier in the same summer, he painted the same river from a nearly identical vantage point—however, the earlier example took a more traditional approach in arranging a landscape. In contrast, the painting on offer demonstrates a more extreme compression of three-dimensional space, and a sharp, oblique perspective of the edge of the mountain leading to the river. The composition is also much more abruptly cropped, resulting in a more radically-constructed view. It represents a turning point in Gauguin’s career, during which he began to develop his own singular approach to modern art.
