It is surprising that the sale of Jan Cowles’s Warhol portrait has generated so little attention when the recent sales of her Mark Tansey and Roy Lichtenstein works have been the occasion for so much media speculation. From the lawsuits surrounding the other two sales, we know that Cowles is no longer making her own decisions. We also know that there has been a great deal of friction between her lawyers and her son, Charles Cowles.

So this sale comes more as a coda to the ill-fated sales than a culmination of those other sales. Or so it might seem.