NEW YORK, NY.- Known to many as the “queen of the beauty industry”, Sydell Miller was guided in every aspect of her life by her family’s mantra: “Think, Believe, Dream, Dare.” From her very first forays into fashion and the beauty business, to her innumerable philanthropic endeavors, and the collection of fine art and design that she surrounded herself with, Miller lived a life of beauty, both inside and out.

This November, Miller’s extraordinary collection will take center stage as the crown jewel of Sotheby’s marquee sales week in New York. Encompassing masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary art, sculpture, and icons of design, this collection unites the finest works across periods, styles, and forms.

Reflecting how Sydell Miller lived with her collection – where fine art and design coexisted in perfect harmony – approximately 90 works will be presented together in landmark Evening and Day sales at Sotheby’s New York this November, with additional works offered in sales throughout this Fall, expected to achieve in the region of $200 million. The sales will be preceded by a series of curated exhibitions in London, Paris, Hong Kong, Taipei and Los Angeles.

Together, the works speak to the awe-inspiring power of beauty in all its forms: from an enthralling example of Monet’s iconic Nymphéas to Kandinsky’s explosion of geometric exuberance; from Picasso’s first depiction of a female artist to an elegant Matisse portrait from wartime France; from an extraordinary work by Yves Klein executed at the height of his career; to unique and defining commissions by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne.

A further selection of works showcasing the full breadth of Miller’s collecting pursuits will be featured in three dedicated online sales. The first online sale will celebrate Miller’s keen eye for fashion, followed by an auction celebrating the collection’s expansive range of ‘objets d’art’, and another featuring exquisite furniture, decorative art, and silver. Miller’s impeccable taste in jewelry will also be showcased in Sotheby’s sales of Magnificent Jewels and Fine Jewels in December as part of The Luxury Sales series.

"I collect pieces I love. Each piece I collect speaks to me in a language of art and design and always excited me when I saw them for the first time. Even today, these pieces still make my heart flutter with joy. I never collected from just one period in time or style. Always collected things that I connected to through their beauty." --SYDELL MILLER

A COLLECTING JOURNEY

Miller’s story began in earnest in the late 1950s, when Sydell Lubin sat in the chair of young stylist and salon owner Arnold Miller for a hair appointment. A smitten Arnold asked her out on a date, and when she inquired “which night”, his response was simply “all of them.” One week and a whirlwind succession of dates later, they were engaged. Together they created Ardell, introducing eyelashes as a professional salon service, and later co-founded Matrix Essentials in 1980, the most innovative professional salon company and the largest manufacturer of professional hair and beauty products. After her husband’s passing in the 90s, Miller took the helm of Matrix as CEO and President, leading the company to unprecedented success. A woman whose passion, drive, influence, and integrity touched more than seven million women per week internationally, Mrs. Miller was an inspiration and role model to women in business. A visionary entrepreneur, Sydell believed that beauty didn’t stop at the hairline, which led her to create the day spa experience, accessible to all women.

After selling her company, with a renewed sense of time and energy, she turned her focus to family, philanthropy and collecting. Informed by countless family visits to galleries, museums and auctions, Miller built the foundations of the extraordinary collection to follow. Alongside her pursuit of fine art, Miller also began collecting design. Her initial focus in these formative years was on iconic French eighteenth century furniture and European design, particularly the French Art Deco period of the 1920s and 1930s. Guided by her impeccable eye for beauty and craftsmanship, she sought out pieces that captured the elegance and refinement of that era. Over time, Miller’s collecting interests broadened to include not only historic masterpieces but also daring contemporary Design works. She began integrating modern and post-war design into her collection, acquiring pieces by such celebrated designers as François Xavier and Claude Lalanne, and – as her passion for decorative arts and design evolved – she showed increasing interest in works by emerging Contemporary designers, including Robert Goosens, David Wiseman, Joseph Walsh and others. What distinguished Miller as a collector is how she lived with these works – fine art and design were not separate categories but coexisted harmoniously in her spaces. Throughout her pioneering career, her self-avowed aim was always to promote “individual expression and creativity”, and this aesthetic is at the heart of her collection.

"Like Sydell, the artists and designers in this collection defied the boundaries set before them, striving for beauty and transformation in their craft and leaving indelible marks on the history of art. Encompassing the pinnacle of Monet’s artistic achievements, Picasso’s triumphant paean to creativity – and beyond – this collection unites the titans of modern art history, each with their own contribution to beauty: one of art’s most profound, and enduring, gifts to the world." --SHARON KIM, SOTHEBY’S VICE CHAIRMAN, IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART

A Glimpse inside the collection

MONET
Claude Monet, Nymphéas oil on canvas, circa 1914–17 Estimate on request

Very few themes in the history of modern art are as celebrated as Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, and this exceptional example, is making its auction debut. The painting marks a radical shift in Monet’s approach to the subject that would come to be regarded as his magnum opus, and prefigures the monumental canvases housed in Paris’ Musée de l’Orangerie.

Using a kaleidoscopic palette of jewel-toned purples and luscious blues, together with touches of white, pink and yellow to portray the flowers, Monet intentionally blurs the boundary between the real and the reflected withinaclose cropped compositional format that marks an early, radical foray into abstraction - anticipating the origins of the large-scale gestural canvases of the Abstract Expressionists in New York thirty years later. Painted in the twilight of his life, Nymphéas can be understood as the accumulated effect of observation – not simply over the course of the sitting in which Monet painted it, but over decades spent spellbound by the beauty and artistic possibilities of his garden.

"Sydell Miller was an impassioned collector, with a great eye for the exceptional and beautiful in all fields. She had an intrinsic love of art and the idea of buying works as a matter of investment or speculation seemed anathema to her. It was rather a natural extension of an aesthetic that permeated her every activity and pursuit. While she welcomed opinions and recommendations, her choices were entirely her own. Meeting nearly 30 years ago, sharing our love for art and being on the other end of the telephone with her at auction, was one of the thrills of my early career. Learning from her about the essential aspects of success in business and life: conducting yourself thoughtfully, ethically and honestly was a lesson I've treasured even more." --DAVID NORMAN, ADVISOR

PICASSO
Pablo Picasso, La Statuaire oil on canvas, 1925 Estimate on request

La Statuaire depicts a seated female figure opposite a portrait bust placed atop a pedestal, the pair positioned in front of a set of French doors opening onto a balcony. As with all great works by Picasso, nothing is as simple as it may first appear. On one canvas, he brings together his wild explorations of Surrealist styles, monumental- themed Neo-Classical imagery and the masterful elements of Cubism.

In the archives of Galerie Paul Rosenberg, who first exhibited this work in 1926, a year after it was created, its title is recorded as La Femme sculpteur – alluding to the subject of the work being a female sculptor either working on an object of her own creation or examining a Classical sculpture for inspiration. This canvas is the first painting depicting a female artist in Picasso’s oeuvre.

Since the year it was painted, La Statuaire has been a part of not only the most important exhibitions of Picasso’s painting, but has also belonged to some of the most distinguished collectors of modern art, including its original owner, Stephen Clark, one of the greatest American collectors of the early 20th century and a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. It entered the collection of Sydell Miller in 1999, where it has remained until today.

Fittingly, the auction also offers Tête de femme, a bronze conceived by Picasso in 1951 and only the second cast of this subject to appear at auction in over 40 years (est. $7–10 million). The sculpture captures the commanding presence of a young Françoise Gilot, an insight into her effervescence and confidence that Picasso was so instantly taken by.

KANDINSKY
Wassily Kandinsky, Weisses Oval (White Oval)
oil on canvas, 1921 Estimate: $15 – 20 million

Last seen at auction more than fifty years ago, Weisses Oval (White Oval) is a celebration of Kandinsky’s life- long fascination with the relationship between color and form. One of the final three paintings he made while living in Russia, it marks an important moment within the evolution of the artist’s singular style.

Since its execution in 1921, Weisses Oval has been regarded as one of the formative examples of a pivotal period in Kandinsky’s career, when he was on the cusp of taking up his teaching post at the Bauhaus in Berlin. The painting served as a declaration of his transformative artistic vision and his belief in the inherent psychological effects of color when articulated within certain shapes. Exhibited in important early shows of Kandinsky’s work, it also featured prominently in his seminal retrospectives, including a 1952 show which traveled to Boston, San Francisco and Cleveland, among other leading American institutions. The work was acquired by New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1945, one of the most prestigious lines of provenance a work by Kandinsky can bear. The same year, it was exhibited in their memorial exhibition organized after the artist’s death in 1944.

MOORE
Henry Moore, Reclining Mother and Child bronze, conceived and cast in 1975–76 Estimate: $8 – 12 million

This rare example of the Reclining Mother and Child represents the pinnacle of Henry Moore’s engagement with his two most celebrated motifs - the mother and child, and the reclining figure. His lifelong exploration of the universal themes was rooted in his childhood experiences and art historical precedents from Renaissance iconography to Pre-Columbian sculpture.

This monumental, yet beguilingly tender, example suggests the profound first encounter between a mother and child, as the female figure beholds the small infant in awe. By reducing the pair to their most elemental forms, Moore underscores the fundamental humanity conveyed, in an emblem of hope and the permanent human bonds of support and compassion.

Originally situated outside at her Palm Beach home, La Rêverie, the work was later brought indoors to her apartment at The Bristol, where Miller enjoyed living with the monumental sculpture and where the work could be experienced up close.

KLEIN
Yves Klein, Relief Éponge bleu sans titre, (RE 28)
dry pigment and synthetic resin, natural sponges and pebbles on panel, 1961
Estimate: $8 – 12 million

Dating to the height of Yves Klein’s career, this extraordinary work encapsulates the philosophies and spirituality that sat at the heart of his output. An icon of Klein’s defiance of the existing boundaries of abstraction, and his pursuit of replicating the unique beauty of the natural world, the artist brings together velvety pigment and organic matter to create a composition reminiscent of the surface of the moon or the deep ocean floor, juxtaposing the void and the concrete, the material and immaterial. As immortalized in a series of iconic photographs, Klein used the seaside as studio for the creation of this work – made on the sunny beaches of Malibu – where he worked in proximity to the natural environment that inspired him.

MATISSE
Henri Matisse, Jeune fille en robe rose
oil on canvas, October 1942 Estimate: $3 – 5 million

In 1942, the Second World War found Matisse ensconced in the sanctuary of his home and studio in Nice, where he remained steadfastly committed to his art, in order to stave off the feelings of hopelessness around the city’s occupation. Eschewing any reference to the outside world, intimate still-lifes and female portraits – such as this – offered a salve of beauty and hope amidst the turmoil.

At the same time, the artist had miraculously recovered from a major surgery the previous year, channeling this optimism into hundreds of drawings replete with spontaneity and lyrical purity of line. He resolved to manifest the liberation achieved in his drawings within his paintings. Jeune fille en robe rose fully deploys this gestural freedom, with its joyous interplay of pigment, emphatic contours and the self-assured gaze of the radiant sitter. The work has never been at auction, having been acquired by Miller in 1998.

LALANNE
François-Xavier Lalanne, ‘Troupeau d’Eléphants dans les Arbres’ Table gilt bronze and glass, 2001
Estimate: $4 – 6 million

A pioneer of Surrealism and design, François-Xavier Lalanne found never-ending inspiration in the animal world. This fascination with flora and fauna evolved into sculptural forms that transformed the familiar and functional into fantastical and timeless works of art.

This characteristically whimsical octagonal table, accompanied by seven gilded elephants marching as a herd under the Acacia trees of the African savanna, was commissioned by Miller directly from the artist through celebrated architect Peter Marino. Each one of the free-standing elephants can be moved into any configuration desired, resulting in a sculpture that can only be best enlivened through active engagement from the steward of the piece.

The choreography of art and design

Part of the power of Sydell Miller’s collection is in how she creatively and harmoniously blended together art and design to create an interior at once completely unique and overwhelmingly elegant. The magical dialogues she choreographed between her art and objects brings new life and energy to each work that is both inspiring and a testament to Sydell’s exquisite taste, originality and boldness. One will never again see Monet’s Nymphéas alongside Claude Lalanne’s unique Nenuphars Consoles. It is a vision. --JODI POLLACK, SOTHEBY’S CHAIRMAN AND CO-WORLDWIDE HEAD OF 20TH CENTURY DESIGN

Sydell Miller’s art-filled home was set across the whole floor of The Bristol, an architectural marvel that stands as one of the most prestigious buildings in West Palm Beach. Within these walls, one sees the evolution of a collector over many decades, and a pioneering journey of art and design that is entirely unique. The project was the result of close collaboration between Miller and her daughter Stacie Halpern. Stacie played a significant role in the interior design, while Sydell oversaw the selection and curation of the art and design pieces. Together, they created a richly layered art- historical and aesthetic dialogue that spanned many periods, movements, and media. Miller’s bold ingenuity was on display at The Bristol with works spanning from the 18th century through to the 21st. Here, a pair of unique Nenuphars consoles commissioned directly from Claude Lalanne (est. $1.5–2 million each) were placed in conversation with Monet’s Nymphéas; and Henry Moore’s Mother and Child with Apple (est. $3–5 million) with Yves Klein’s Relief Éponge bleu sans titre, (RE 28) (est. $8–12 million). In the dining room, Fernand Léger’s Les Trois figures (est. $3–5 million) offered a bold juxtaposition to Jean Dubuffet’s Le Cérémonieux (est. $2.5–3.5 million).