In what may provide a jolt to a weakened art market, Sotheby’s has won a Leonard Lauder collection valued at more than $400 million, to sell this fall, the auction house announced on Monday.
The trove of 55 works includes important museum-quality prizes by artists such as Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch that made Lauder, the cosmetics magnate who died in June, one of the world’s leading collectors.
“He’s a once in a generation not just collector but philanthropist in the arts,” Charles Stewart, Sotheby’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. “I think we’re going to make history with this collection. It will be something talked about for a long time.”
Among the treasures coming up in two November sales are Klimt’s vibrant “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” (1914-16), estimated to sell for more than $150 million, accounting for more than a third of the collection’s total estimate. It was recently lent to the National Gallery of Canada, and is one of only two full-length portraits left in private hands.
There are also two striking Klimt landscapes: “Blooming Meadow,” created in 1906 at the height of the artist’s career (estimated at $80 million to $100 million), and “Forest Slope in Unterach,” painted in 1917 during the artist’s final summer stay at Lake Attersee in Austria and never before at auction (estimated at more than $70 million to $90 million).
The collection also includes six bronze Matisse sculptures with a combined estimate of about $30 million; one of Munch’s “Midsummer Night” paintings, circa 1901-03, estimated at more than $20 million; and Agnes Martin’s 1964 oil and graphite on canvas, “The Garden,” which carries the highest estimate on a work by the artist at auction — more than $10 million.
“These are the works Leonard chose to live with,” said Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s chairman, Americas. “When he embarked on the journey to start collecting art, it was with many of the works in this group.”
In an uncertain economic climate under the Trump administration, collectors have been loath to part with their most prized artworks — unsure of being able to attract top prices. At the same time, collectors have been more tentative about making purchases, uncertain about their financial prospects.
Stewart said that the auction house had provided the Lauder estate with a financial guarantee to secure this collection — meaning a minimum price it can count on — but would not address whether Sotheby’s would seek to offset risk through third-party guarantors, though that is standard practice these days.
This means Sotheby’s will be responsible for works, should they sell for less than the guaranteed price or fail to sell. (In the spring, Sotheby’s failed to sell a Giacometti sculpture that was the $70 million star of that auction season.)
“From the outside, I’m sure it will look like a success,” Jacob King, an art adviser, said of the Lauder sales. “The question I would ask is if Sotheby’s is making money from this. Or are they losing money to create an appearance of confidence.”
Analysts said the Lauder collection might lure collectors back into the market.
“Leonard Lauder is often cited as the example of an old-school collector,” said Natasha Degen, chairwoman of art market studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “You don’t need 20 people bidding. If you have a couple committed bidders willing to bid up past the reserve, then the auction will be a success.”
Part of what swayed the Lauder estate toward Sotheby’s was its new headquarters in the Breuer building, the former home to the Whitney Museum of American Art, with which Lauder had a long history. As a trustee and later president and chairman of the Whitney, he gave millions in money and art, including nearly 50 works by Jasper Johns. One $131 million financial donation in 2008 was the largest in the museum’s history at the time.
“The Breuer building played a role in the decision,” said David Resnicow, a spokesman for the Lauder estate, which includes Lauder’s sons William, the chairman of the board of Estée Lauder Companies, and Gary, managing director of Lauder Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as well as Joel S. Ehrenkranz, a former Whitney president.
Lauder, who became the Whitney’s chairman emeritus, initially opposed the museum’s move to the Meatpacking district as risky. But he ultimately became a convert to the new Renzo Piano-designed project — which opened in 2015 — and it was named for him: The Leonard A. Lauder Building.
Lauder’s extensive collection also helped drive the development of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In giving that museum his major collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures in 2013 — valued at more than $1 billion — Lauder helped spur the Met to create a worthy home for those Picassos and Braques by moving forward with a new Frida Escobedo-designed wing for Modern and contemporary art, which is underway.
After the initial Met gift was announced, Lauder — the emeritus chairman of the Estée Lauder Companies, whose fortune was estimated at $15.1 billion — added another dozen major Cubist works.
Lauder’s collection also includes photography and 19th-century literary posters, both of which he has donated to the Met.
“Leonard is a collector who was a historian,” said Emily Braun, an art history professor at Hunter College who had been Lauder’s curator for 39 years. “He got these objects that were both aesthetically the very best and historically the most important.”
Klimt is also a passion of Lauder’s younger brother, Ronald S. Lauder, a prominent collector and Museum of Modern Art trustee who founded the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. He famously purchased a gold-flecked 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Klimt for the Neue for $135 million in 2006, the highest sum ever paid for a painting at that time.
The art market has suffered a prolonged hangover from the white-hot days of 2022, when Christie’s sold $1.6 billion worth of artworks from the collection of the Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen.
A combination of political uncertainty, high interest rates and falling demand from Asian collectors has forced the art market to shrink in recent years — as much as a 12 percent decline in 2024, according to the latest report by Art Basel and UBS, which also found a 39 percent decline in auctions of artworks valued at more than $10 million.
In the last three years, auction houses have consolidated their businesses with layoffs and buyouts. Sotheby’s also sold a stake of its business to ADQ, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, last fall, in a deal valued at $1 billion amid reports of a potential partnership with Pace Gallery, a blue-chip art dealer.
The Lauder sales are expected to add a much-needed dose of excitement at a time when big-ticket sales have declined at auction. “These paintings have incredible pedigree,” Braun said. “They’ve never been on the open market.”
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for 30 years, covers arts and culture.
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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