NEW YORK, NY.- This Fall, Phillips will offer thirty works of art from the esteemed Triton Collection Foundation in a dedicated Evening Sale on 14 November. The works span the century and feature movement-defining examples of Impressionist, Modern, and Post-War Art, including Pablo Picasso’s Femme en corset lisant un livre, 1914-1917; Georges Braque’s La bouteille de Bass, c. 1911-1912; and Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, 1954. Phillips is proud to announce that Fernand Léger’s Le 14 juillet, 1912-1913 will also be showcased in the sale, which features a recently-discovered fully completed artwork on the verso, from the series Fumées sur les toits, 1911-1912. The Triton Collection Foundation has a stellar reputation for their discerning judgment in acquiring works of art. This group of works being offered for sale reflects the quality, importance, and rarity of the Triton Collection Foundation and echoes the collection at large. Living the Avant-Garde: The Triton Collection Foundation features works of art that are fresh to the market, with the majority having never been sold at auction. The world tour to Paris, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles will precede the exhibition and auction in New York, which will mark the first time that these incredible works of art will ever be publicly displayed all together.

The Triton Collection Foundation has committed itself to assembling an outstanding collection of avant-garde works by the leading artists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. By the late 1990s, they had shifted their focus to fin-de-siècle artists, with Cubist artists soon to follow. After about ten years spent collecting artists active at the turn of the 20th century, they followed the avant-garde into its international, Post-War incarnation, leading to a robust, yet highly curated collection that focused on international avant-garde-artists from 1870 to 1970. The foundation has stellar reputation for their discerning judgement in acquiring works of art. The founders took the time to conduct research into art history, artists, and movements to find out which specific works they wanted to acquire for the collection, in order to retain a coherent unity. Works of art needed to be high quality or significantly rare in order to match the demands of the collection. They then made it their mission to share as many works with the public as possible, with works having been on long- and short-term loans to museums around the world. This is a very exciting moment for the Foundation, as it enters its next chapter, with the next generation taking the lead. They aim to deepen their commitment to the next avant-garde artists and to share the works in the collection with the world.

Keesjan Cordia of the Triton Collection Foundation, said, “The Triton Collection Foundation’s mission for the last three decades has been to assemble a group of artworks created by the pioneers and ‘innovators’ of their time, those who broke the boundaries of the traditional movements and searched for new ways to see the world. Our parents dedicated themselves to sharing that collection with the wider public. They took great care and pride in the works that they have chosen to acquire; never adding works that do not fit the quality or standard of the collection and always patently waiting for those unique pieces they knew were out there. Ultimately, our role is to serve as temporary hosts for the incredible works in an ever-evolving collection. Our hope is that these treasures find homes that allow them to continue to contribute to the public's understanding and appreciation of art. Now, as we look into the future, we welcome the opportunity to expand our own horizons by forward thinking. We look forward to experiencing a new journey of collecting as our parents have done with this amazing collection. These dynamics makes collecting memorable and fun; it should always be evolving over generations, and we, as parents ourselves, hope that the next generation will do the same.”

Jean-Paul Engelen, Phillips’ President, Americas, said, “The discernment and dedication to collecting that The Triton Collection Foundation has demonstrated over the past thirty years cannot be overstated. They serve as the gold standard for what can be achieved when you are truly passionate about your work and mission. Miety Heiden and I, along with the entire Phillips team, are honored to have been entrusted with the sale of these extraordinary works of art, and delighted to have the opportunity to showcase them all together for the first time in history. The exhibition is sure to be a once-in-a-lifetime moment for collectors and enthusiasts alike to experience these incredible works of art together, which echo the quality of the Triton Foundation Collection as a whole.”

The Cubist Masterworks

Phillips will present Fernand Léger’s double-sided canvas at auction. This painting is two artworks in one: on the front, there is Le 14 juillet, an exuberant Cubist interpretation of the French national holiday, and on the back, the newly discovered work from the Fumées sur les toits series.

This second painting lay hidden on the verso for years, believed to be damaged beyond repair. But, thanks to the hard work of conservators, the Triton Collection Foundation was able to save the painting on the verso, and it was exhibited for the first time in history last year at the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands. The long-lost work belongs to Léger’s Fumées sur les toits series, which were derived from the view out Léger’s studio window across the rooftops of Paris. The plumes of smoke, chimneys, and towers of Notre-Dame cathedral inspired the artist to push his Cubist paintings in an even more abstract and colorful direction.




The story behind this work is a prime example of the incredible provenance behind each and every work from the Triton Collection Foundation to be offered at auction at Phillips, New York this November.

Fracturing the picture surface into intersecting planes with little distinction between the treatment of object and surrounding space, Georges Braque’s La Bouteille de Bass in the Triton Collection Foundation is a masterpiece from the height of Pablo Picasso and Braque’s most intensively collaboratively period, working – as the latter so memorably described – like two “mountain-climbers roped together.” Built up through a remarkable variety of broken brushwork where tightly concentrated, shorter brushstrokes are contrasted with looser, more luminous passages, the whole surface is highly activated here as the object of the title dissolves into the space surrounding it. A recurring subject of both Braque and Picasso’s still lifes from this period, the bottle of Bass is here discernible through the incorporation of lettering, anchoring the composition back in the observable world and providing a key for decoding its pictorial elements.

Although the interruption of the First World War and relocation of many artists to the front marked a natural end to this spirit of collaboration and creative exchange, Picasso would carry these lessons forward into his post-World War I painting, where new personal and professional opportunities introduced a more playful note to his Cubist experiments. A masterful counterpoint to Braque’s earlier work, Picasso’s 1914-1917 Femme en corset lisant un livre in the Triton Collection Foundation exemplifies the lessons learned from this intensive period of radical experiment in the years before war, the flattened sense of pictorial space, complex compositional arrangement and playful sense of color and pattern all hallmarks of Picasso’s evolving style in these pivotal years.

Post-War Icons

Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell’s early painting, Untitled, 1954, came to the Triton Collection Foundation directly from the artist’s estate. This impressive, large-scale canvas records the transformation of Mitchell’s painting style in the early 1950s, from a more geometric, de Kooning-inspired aesthetic to her mature compositions driven by bright colors and bold brushstrokes. Untitled strikes a middle ground, as the work of an artist coming into her own. Her mark making is quick and energetic, with strong clusters of upward motion, and the color palette of black, slate, and concrete greys, and browns, mixed in with bright shocks of red, purple, and yellow locates Untitled in Mitchell’s New York City of the 1950s.

Like her modernist forebears, Mitchell picks up on the colors and energy of the modern city in Untitled; indeed, her palette recalls that of the Cubists’ Paris as much as it belongs to her Abstract Expressionist New York.

The Impressionists and Les Nabis

Living the Avant-Garde: The Triton Collection Foundation follows the thread of innovation through art history, beginning with Edgar Degas, the idiosyncratic Impressionist. At times critical of the en plein air tendencies of his peers, Degas applied Impressionist values of color, light, and everyday observation to interior scenes, of which Le petit déjeuner après le bain, c. 1894, is a fine example. Degas captures an intimate, seemingly spontaneous scene of a woman drying herself after a bath. The slope of the woman’s bare back and hair, tied in a low, red bun, recall the forms of Degas’ iconic dancers. This work is one of the favorites in the collection and has been on long term loan to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The Triton Collection Foundation also includes some of the finest work by Nabis artists, such as Émile Bernard and Paul Sérusier, to come to auction in recent years, with works of exceptional provenance and high aesthetic quality. Sérusier’s La Cueillette des pommes is the artist’ first major foray into allegorical subject matter, as his depiction of Breton women harvesting apples doubles as an allegory for the Tree of Knowledge. This work, along with Édouard Vuillard’s Le Cantique des cantiques and Maurice Denis’s La vendange mystique, were also on long term loan at the Van Gogh Museum and have all travelled for many exhibitions worldwide during last 20 years.