Allen Collection auction totals $1.5 billion: richest ever

It was the richest auction sale in history, and that’s just the first part of it: when it was nighttime in Italy, the first nucleus of works from the collection of Paul G. Allen, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft along with Bill Gates, was going up for sale in a highly anticipated auction at Christie’ s in New York. The computer genius, who was born in Seattle in 1953 and passed away 2018, was a huge art lover and arranged in his will that after his death the pieces in his collection be put up for sale and the proceeds donated to charity.

Entitled Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection, Part I, the sale totaled a record of more than $1.5 billion ($1,506,386,000 to be precise), setting the record for the richest private collection sale in history. Thus, the previous record of $922 million achieved by Sotheby’s in the spring of this year, with the sale of the Harry and Linda Macklowe collection, was significantly surpassed. The auction broke the world record as early as midway through the auction when the auctioneer, Jussi Pylkkänen, hammered Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Femme de Venise III, for $25,007,500. All lots in the auction were sold (fifty-nine in all), with a value of 122% of the total base estimate. All proceeds from the estate of this historic sale will be dedicated to philanthropy, according to Mr. Allen’s wishes.

The sale featured one highlight after another, with five paintings fetching more than $100 million each (another record: never in a single sale had so many works exceeded that amount), each of which set a world record for the related artist. Three of the lots entered the list of the most expensive works sold at auction in history. The first is the painting that can be considered somewhat the revolutionary pointillist manifesto of Georges Seurat, namely Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version), which sold for $149,240,000, the highest figure in the auction. Second is Paul Cézanne’s monumental landscape, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, which sold for $137,790,000. Third lot on the list is Vincent van Gogh’s Verger avec cyprès, which captures the artist’s first encounter with the south of France: it fetched $117,180,000. Completing the list of five paintings that sold for more than $100 million is Paul Gauguin ’s Maternité II from 1899, one of his most important years, which totaled $105,730,000, and Gustav Klimt’s evocative depiction of a birch forest, which sold for $104,585,000.

Marc Porter, president of Christie’s Americas, said, “The Paul G. Allen Collection will always be celebrated as a monumental collection of masterpieces supporting philanthropy on a historic scale. Christie’s and Allen Estate set a world record for the value of a single auction, and it is deeply gratifying that we were able to do so for the benefit of others. Let us all take a moment to remember that this was made possible by one man’s passionate pursuit of excellence and his commitment to making the world a better place. These are values that Christie’s feels deeply, and thanks to Paul Allen, we were able to live out our values on this important night.”

Max Carter, Vice President of 20th and 21st Century Art at Christie’s, said, “Over these past weeks and months, collectors, art lovers and our colleagues from around the world have stood on the mountaintop, looking at 500 years of visionary achievements from Botticelli to Seurat, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Freud, and the view was breathtaking. We may never again see this range, quantity and quality of masterpieces in a private collection.”

Allen Collection auction totals $1.5 billion: richest ever

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