The Baroness Thyssen is making headlines again, but this time not for her recent health issues. After several months during which various moves suggested that Carmen Cervera was reorganizing her estate, she has now decided to auction one of the most important paintings from her private collection: the oil painting The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet by Edward Hopper. This work has been exhibited widely around the world, among other places, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
This landmark piece in the history of modern art will go on sale on November 18 at Sotheby’s in New York. It will be within the The Modern Evening Auction session, organized in collaboration with the fashion house CELINE, and its estimated price is positioned between 17 and 27 million euros. To put this figure into context, one of the latest auctions that dominated headlines was Banksy’s famous painting which only reached 15.9 million euros.
This surprising move by the aristocrat and art collector to part with one of her favorite paintings –which has remained for more than 45 years in the Thyssen-Bornemisza family collection– has been framed within a liquidity search. After several failed attempts to part with various real estate properties, Baroness Thyssen leased out her luxury house in Mallorca this summer for 16,000 euros per month.
Similarly, and while she is still recovering from a severe pneumonia at her Costa Brava hideaway, she decided to rent out also her iconic yacht, Mata Mua. The vessel, named in honor of the famous painting by Paul Gauguin, costs 8,000 euros per day and features a jacuzzi, gym, lavish salons, and capacity for nine guests.
This is The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet
Edward Hopper (Nyack, New York, 1882 – New York, 1967) was the leading figure of American realism in the 20th century and a keen observer of the everyday, who, through his imagination, transformed these observations into works of art that reflected his characteristic tense and enigmatic atmospheres. Hopper frequently drew inspiration from the two places where he spent most of his time: Midtown Manhattan and Cape Cod, where, from 1934 onward, he had a second residence and a studio.
The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet, by Edward Hopper.
It was on this peninsula located on the eastern tip of the state of Massachusetts where he painted The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet during one of the most celebrated decades of his career. From his first visit to Cape Cod in 1930 until his death in 1967, Hopper documented his stay on the Cape almost every summer and captured the coastal charm of New England in each of his successive trips.
In this work, which depicts a bright August morning, Hopper pays homage to his friendship with Martha and Reggie McKeen, a young couple with whom he used to go sailing on his boat during summer excursions. The artist created five masterpieces about sailing over the course of his career. This luminous 1944 canvas is the last in the series and one of only two navigation paintings that still remain in private hands.
Baroness Thyssen’s Auctions
This is not the first time Baroness Thyssen has decided to sell some works from her collection to the highest bidder. In March 2020 she auctioned at Christie’s about two dozen smaller works, raising around 150,000 euros. More controversial was the sale of The Lock (1824) by John Constable: this iconic British landscape was auctioned in July 2012 in London for 27.89 million euros and its sale caused a great stir in the art world.
Also highly publicized was the case of the famous Mata Mua by Paul Gauguin. The baroness’s widow took this masterpiece out of the museum in 2020, contemplating a possible sale that alarmed the cultural circle. Ultimately, the painting, whose title means “Once upon a time” in Tahitian, was not auctioned. After intense negotiations with the Spanish Government, the work returned to the museum and its permanency was secured through a later signed agreement to lease her entire collection.
