The extraordinary collection of Sydell Miller, known to reflect her philosophy of life, will headline Sotheby’s marquee sales this November in New York. Known for her eye for vision in the beauty industry, Miller’s passion for art and design has driven this extraordinary collection to be offered at auction. Featuring Modern and Contemporary masterpieces, sculptures, and design icons, the estimate for the overall collection hovers around $200 million.
Co-founder of Matrix Essentials, Miller became an icon in the beauty world long before she was recognised as a serious collector. Sotheby’s sale will include works by Monet, Picasso, and Kandinsky, among other leading figures in art history. Sotheby’s plans to present about 90 works this fall in its Evening and Day sales with supplementary online auctions.
For Miller, art was a personal journey. “I collect pieces I love,” she said, reflecting on her eclectic collection’s range across eras and styles. She was never about the trends but about being surrounded by beauty that spoke to her. Her collection attests to this philosophy from Claude Monet’s celebrated Nymphéas through Pablo Picasso’s La Statuaire to Yves Klein’s Relief Éponge.
The sale of Miller’s collection also speaks volumes about her love for design. Along with fine art, she loved the iconic French 18th-century furniture and modern designs of the works by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, with outstanding results. The combination of fine art and decorative objects on full display in her West Palm Beach home singled out her collection.
Sharon Kim, Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s, praised the mix of art and design in Miller’s collection, saying, “Like Sydell, the artists in this collection defied boundaries, striving for beauty and transformation.”
This fall, when Sydell Miller’s collection takes centre stage at Sotheby’s, her legacy as a businesswoman, philanthropist, and collector will continue to inspire. Exhibitions in London, Paris, and Hong Kong will precede the sales in New York.
Miller died in February at the age of 86.
Highlights
MONET
Claude Monet, Nymphéas oil on canvas, circa 1914–17 Estimate on request
Very few themes in the history of modern art are as celebrated as Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, and this exceptional example is making its auction debut. The painting marks a radical shift in Monet’s approach to the subject that would come to be regarded as his magnum opus and prefigures the monumental canvases housed in Paris’ Musée de l’Orangerie.
Using a kaleidoscopic palette of jewel-toned purples and luscious blues, together with touches of white, pink and yellow to portray the flowers, Monet intentionally blurs the boundary between the real and the reflected within close cropped compositional format that marks an early, radical foray into abstraction – anticipating the origins of the large-scale gestural canvases of the Abstract Expressionists in New York thirty years later. Painted in the twilight of his life, Nymphéas can be understood as the accumulated effect of observation – not simply throughout the sitting where Monet painted it, but over decades spent spellbound by his garden’s beauty and artistic possibilities.
“Sydell Miller was a passionate collector with a great eye for the exceptional and beautiful in all fields. She had an intrinsic love of art, and the idea of buying works as a matter of investment or speculation seemed anathema. It was a natural extension of an aesthetic that permeated her every activity and pursuit. While she welcomed opinions and recommendations, her choices were entirely her own. Meeting nearly 30 years ago, sharing our love for art and being on the other end of the telephone with her at auction was one of the thrills of my early career. Learning from her about the essential aspects of success in business and life: conducting yourself thoughtfully, ethically and honestly was a lesson I’ve treasured even more.” –DAVID NORMAN, ADVISOR
Pablo Picasso, La Statuaire oil on canvas, 1925 Estimate on request
La Statuaire depicts a seated female figure opposite a portrait bust placed atop a pedestal, the pair positioned in front of a set of French doors opening onto a balcony. As with all great works by Picasso, nothing is as simple as it may first appear. On one canvas, he brings together his wild explorations of Surrealist styles, monumental-themed Neo-Classical imagery, and the masterful elements of Cubism.
In the archives of Galerie Paul Rosenberg, who first exhibited this work in 1926, a year after it was created, its title is recorded as La Femme sculpteur – alluding to the subject of the work being a female sculptor either working on an object of her creation or examining a Classical sculpture for inspiration. This canvas is the first painting depicting a female artist in Picasso’s oeuvre.
Since the year it was painted, La Statuaire has been a part of not only the most important exhibitions of Picasso’s painting but has also belonged to some of the most distinguished collectors of modern art, including its original owner, Stephen Clark, one of the greatest American collectors of the early 20th century and a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. It entered the collection of Sydell Miller in 1999, where it has remained until today.
Fittingly, the auction also offers Tête de femme, a bronze conceived by Picasso in 1951 and only the second cast of this subject to appear at auction in over 40 years (est. $7–10 million). The sculpture captures the commanding presence of a young Françoise Gilot, an insight into her enthusiasm and confidence that Picasso was so instantly taken by.
Wassily Kandinsky, Weisses Oval (White Oval)
oil on canvas, 1921 Estimate: $15 – 20 million
Last seen at auction more than fifty years ago, Weisses Oval (White Oval) celebrates Kandinsky’s lifelong fascination with the relationship between colour and form. One of the final three paintings he made while living in Russia marks an important moment in the evolution of the artist’s singular style.
Since its execution in 1921, Weisses Oval has been regarded as one of the formative examples of a pivotal period in Kandinsky’s career, when he was on the cusp of taking up his teaching post at the Bauhaus in Berlin. The painting served as a declaration of his transformative artistic vision and his belief in the inherent psychological effects of colour when articulated within specific shapes. Exhibited in important early shows of Kandinsky’s work, it was also featured prominently in his seminal retrospectives, including a 1952 show that travelled to Boston, San Francisco, and Cleveland, among other leading American institutions. The work was acquired by New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1945, one of the most prestigious lines of provenance a work by Kandinsky can bear. The same year, it was exhibited in their memorial exhibition organized after the artist died in 1944.
MOORE
Henry Moore’s Reclining Mother and Child bronze was conceived and cast in 1975–76. The Estimate is $8 – 12 million.
This rare example of the Reclining Mother and Child represents the pinnacle of Henry Moore’s engagement with his two most celebrated motifs—the mother and child and the reclining figure. His lifelong exploration of universal themes was rooted in his childhood experiences and art historical precedents, from Renaissance iconography to pre-Columbian sculpture.
This monumental yet beguilingly tender example suggests the profound first encounter between a mother and child, as the female figure beholds the small infant in awe. By reducing the pair to their most elemental forms, Moore underscores the fundamental humanity conveyed, in an emblem of hope and the permanent human bonds of support and compassion.
Originally situated outside her Palm Beach home, La Rêverie, the work was later brought indoors to her apartment at The Bristol, where Miller enjoyed living with the monumental sculpture and experiencing it up close.
KLEIN
Yves Klein, Relief Éponge bleu sans titre, (RE 28)
dry pigment and synthetic resin, natural sponges and pebbles on panel, 1961
Estimate: $8 – 12 million
Dating to the height of Yves Klein’s career, this extraordinary work encapsulates the philosophies and spirituality that sat at the heart of his output. An icon of Klein’s defiance of the existing boundaries of abstraction and his pursuit of replicating the unique beauty of the natural world, the artist brings together velvety pigment and organic matter to create a composition reminiscent of the surface of the moon or the deep ocean floor, juxtaposing the void and the concrete, the material and immaterial. As immortalized in a series of iconic photographs, Klein used the seaside as a studio for creating this work – made on the sunny beaches of Malibu – where he worked in proximity to the natural environment that inspired him.
MATISSE
Henri Matisse, Jeune fille en robe rose
oil on canvas, October 1942 Estimate: $3 – 5 million
In 1942, the Second World War found Matisse ensconced in the sanctuary of his home and studio in Nice. There, he remained steadfastly committed to his art to stave off the feelings of hopelessness surrounding the city’s occupation. Eschewing any reference to the outside world, intimate still-lifes and female portraits—such as this—offered a salve of beauty and hope amidst the turmoil.
At the same time, the artist had miraculously recovered from a major surgery the previous year, channelling this optimism into hundreds of drawings replete with spontaneity and lyrical purity of line. He resolved to manifest the liberation achieved in his drawings within his paintings. Jeune fille en robe rose fully deploys this gestural freedom with its joyous interplay of pigment, emphatic contours and the self-assured gaze of the radiant sitter. The work has never been at auction, acquired by Miller in 1998.
LALANNE
François-Xavier Lalanne, ‘Troupeau d’Eléphants dans les Arbres’ Table gilt bronze and glass, 2001
Estimate: $4 – 6 million
A pioneer of Surrealism and design, François-Xavier Lalanne found never-ending inspiration in the animal world. This fascination with flora and fauna evolved into sculptural forms that transformed the familiar and functional into fantastical and timeless works of art.
This characteristically whimsical octagonal table, accompanied by seven gilded elephants marching as a herd under the Acacia trees of the African savanna, was commissioned by Miller directly from the artist through celebrated architect Peter Marino. Each one of the free-standing elephants can be moved into any configuration desired, resulting in a sculpture that can only be best enlivened through active engagement from the steward of the piece.
The Sydell Miller Collection Headlines Sotheby’s NY November Marquee Sales