The Sherwood collection – Christie’s

This May, Christie’s will offer The Dorothy and Richard Sherwood Collection across the so called 20th Century Week. The Sherwoods were admired within the collecting community for studying deeply and selecting paintings, drawings and sculptures that excited and challenged them. The result is a collection of discerning taste and exceptional quality. The works being offered reflect their profound connoisseurship, their appreciation of the creators and the creative process, and their great adventures of the heart and mind.

The fine art collection of Dorothy and Richard Sherwood represents a lifetime of travel and discovery, an embrace of global art and artists—and erudition reaching across categories and continents. As pioneering civic leaders in Los Angeles, the Sherwoods were visionary thinkers and leaders who made an indelible impact on some of the finest arts institutions in the world.

Leading the collection is the tour de force by Balthus, Thérèse sur une banquette, 1939 (estimate: $12-18 million), which will be offered in the 13 May Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art. The present picture is the last of the artist’s renowned series of portraits featuring his muse, Thérèse Blanchard. In late 1935 Balthus became acquainted with Thérèse, a girl from a large family that lived a few blocks from the artist’s new studio. She was fourteen years old when she posed in 1939 for this piece.

 

 

Highlighting the Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale on 13 May, is Richard Diebenkorn’s Berkeley #32, from 1955 (estimate: $6-8 million). With its rich tapestry of intertwining forms, Berkeley #32 is one of the finest examples of the expressive brushstrokes that define the artist’s important series of paintings. While refreshingly modern in its execution, the work is also a supreme example of the artist’s debt to those he considered the heroes of art history, in particular Henry Matisse.