Sotheby’s Sells Jean Stein’s Art Collection

It has been an extraordinary season for estates coming to market. Last week, Sotheby’s added to the cacophony of collector’s stories with the works once owned by Jean Stein, daughter of Hollywood legend Jules Stein, and major New York cultural figure until her suicide earlier this year:

Sotheby’s is honored to announce a series of sales celebrating Jean Stein – author, editor and oral historian, who chronicled the lives and work of cultural and political figures in New York, Paris, Hollywood and beyond. A cultural connector, who brought together creators in literature, theater and the visual arts, such as William Faulkner, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and others, Ms. Stein created a world that seamlessly combined her involvement in groundbreaking events in 20th century America with her intellectually curious tastes and sprawling network of friends and admirers.

Her property will be spread out among various sales. Next week, her eclectic but superior taste will be on display with works by Magritte, Richard Prince and Giacometti (above, left to right.)

• Alberto Giacometti’s 1946 oil, Femme Assise (La Mère de l’Artiste) (estimate $4/6 million). Femme Assise was originally in Ms. Stein’s father’s collection, who had acquired it from Pierre Matisse in 1955. Ms. Stein was so enamored with the work that she, in her early twenties, purchased it from him just two years later, in 1957, for $750.
• René Magritte’s La Voix du Sang, an enchanting gouache on paper executed in 1947 (estimate $600/900,000)
• Ed Ruscha’s Light Leaks (estimate $1.5/2 million) was commissioned for Stein’s magazine, Grand Street, but she acquired it a year later.
• Andy Warhol’s Flowers (estimate $150/200,000) was a gift from the artist and is dedicated on the overlap: “To Jean V Love Andy Warhol”
• Richard Prince’s Untitled (Protest Painting), acquired from the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York (estimate $400/600,000)
• John Baldessari’s Buffalo and Deer (With Void), exhibited at Sonnabend Gallery’s exhibition of John Baldessari: Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (estimate $120/180,000)