Sotheby’s has secured two valuable private collections for the auction house’s autumn New York sales, offering significant wins as the auction house’s losses mount amid a weakened market.
The 37 works that belonged to the late Chicago-based collectors Jay and Cindy Pritzker, are expected by specialists to collectively bring in around $120m. And 55 works from the collection of the cosmetics billionaire Leonard Lauder, who died in June, are collectively estimated to sell for around $400m.
Just one work from Lauder’s trove accounts for more than a third of the consignment’s total: Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) has been given an estimate in excess of $150m. Two of the artist’s landscapes, Blooming Meadow (1906) and Forest Slope in Unterach (1917) are expected to sell for between $80m and $100m, and $70m and $90m, respectively. The collection also includes works by Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch and Agnes Martin.
Edvard Munch, Sankthansnatt Johannisnacht (Mittsommernacht) (St. John’s Night) (Midsummer Night’s Eve), around 1901-03. Est in excess of $20m Courtesy Sotheby’s
Jay Pritzker was a co-founder of the Hyatt hotel chain and a member of the prominent Pritzker family in Chicago (Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is Jay Pritzker’s nephew). He was married for more than a half-century to Cindy. Together, they co-founded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize—the discipline’s most coveted award—in 1979 and built an impressive art collection. Jay died in 1999 and Cindy died last March, aged 101.
Works from the Pritzkers’ collection headed to Sotheby’s are led by Vincent van Gogh’s Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887), a still-life of a stack of books with a $40m estimate. After passing through three generations of the Van Gogh family after the artist’s death, Romans Parisiens’ most recent auction appearance was 1988. According to Sotheby’s, 19th-century viewers would have immediately recognised the yellow paperback covers in the painting as belonging to Charpentier books, from the Parisian publishing house that innovated inexpensive, mass-market publishing.
Vincent van Gogh’s Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887) Courtesy Sotheby’s
Other works coming to market from the Pritzker collection include pieces by blue-chip artists Paul Gauguin, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Max Beckmann and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Additional lots will appear in other auctions at Sotheby’s, like work by Le Corbusier, Georges Braque, Fernando Botero and Alexander Calder in a day auction of modern art.
The two collections’ star lots will be sold at Sotheby’s marquee evening auctions in New York this November, the first series of sales to be held at the auction house’s new headquarters at the Breuer Building. Both Lauder and the Pritzkers had ties to the Brutalist landmark. Lauder was a longtime supporter of the Whitney Museum of American Art, which commissioned the building and occupied it for decades. The ongoing renovations to prepare the space for Sotheby’s are being led by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who received the Pritzker Prize in 2001 .
Paul Gauguin, La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache, 1889. Est $6m-$8m Courtesy Sotheby’s
The Lauder collection is the most valuable consignment announced so far for the autumn sales in New York by any of the major auction houses. The pressure is on as a recent ArtTactic study found global auction sales fell 6.2% in the first half of 2025. Last week, filings from Sotheby’s parent company showed the auction house lost $248m in 2024, more than doubling its losses compared to the previous year. It is not yet clear what sorts of incentives Sotheby’s offered to Lauder’s and the Pritzkers’ heirs or estates to secure the consignments, though in past seasons firms have been known to waive certain fees or offer guarantees to reduce the risks of lots failing to sell and becoming “burned”.
Rival house Christie’s has landed the Weis family collection, built by the late supermarket boss Robert F. Weis and his wife, Patricia G. Ross. Robert died in 2015 and Patricia died last year, and their children have consigned 80 works with a collective estimate of more than $180m. Standout lots include work by Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Christie’s is reportedly confident in the collection, despite the downturn in demand of the past three years—the auction house secured the sale by offering to pay nearly $200m upfront, according to The New York Times.
Christie’s will also offer more than a dozen works from the collection of the late billionaire Elaine Wynn, which is expected by specialists to bring in more than $75m. Trophy works from Wynn’s collection include Lucian Freud’s The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer (2005) and Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park #40 (1971), both with $15m to $25m estimates.
