Colin Gleadell has the news of Phillips’s newly announced Matisse bronze for the London sales. Nu Allongé is the third cast of a series of ten. Another in the series sold for $9.6m seventeen years ago at Phillips. This one comes to market with an estimate, £5-7m, keyed to that long-ago sale:
Others from the edition were cast until 1951 and are held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Texas.
While all of these other casts have a shiny surface from years of protective waxing, number three’s more matte finish is much closer to its original state.
Phillips auction house ups its game with selections from Matisse and Picasso (Telegraph)