A visitor looks over Pablo Picasso’s painting Femme ل la montre, the painting will be auctioned in November as part of the Emily Fisher Landau Collection and is expected to fetch $120 million, pictured on display at Sotheby’s on September 13, 2023 in New York. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith / AFP)
Months after her death at 102, about 120 artworks from the major New York philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau’s estate will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s in November.
A single-owner evening sale containing roughly 30 works will be led by a 1932 Picasso estimated to sell for more than $120 million; if it achieves that price, Femme à la Montre will become the second most expensive work by the artist to sell at auction.
"She bought it in 1968,” says her daughter Candia Fisher, speaking of the Picasso. "She was so excited about it. It was absolutely the seminal piece, the one and only.”
The painting hung above a fireplace on Park Avenue, Fisher continues. "It was a real prize to her. She loved, loved, loved it, and we all had the pleasure of it for all those years.”
The evening sale will be followed by a day sale with less expensive items. In total, Fisher Landau’s collection is expected to bring in more than $400 million, making it an early and critical measure of the all-important November evening sales.
"The market is not as strong for works that come up frequently, or are similar to works that come up frequently,” says Brooke Lampley, the global head of Sotheby’s fine art division.
"But what we’ve seen over and over again is that demand continues to grow for works that are truly once-in-a-lifetime acquisition opportunities.” The pieces in Fisher Landau’s collection, Lampley continues, "have not been on the market for 50 years and are truly outstanding examples by the artists-and are just outstanding works of art.”
Origins of the Collection
Fisher Landau was married to real estate developer Martin Fisher until his death, after which she married clothing manufacturer Sheldon Landau, who also predeceased her.
She famously began collecting art in earnest after her jewelry was stolen; using insurance payments, she purchased works by such modernist masters as Rothko, de Kooning, Léger and Picasso.
She fell under the tutelage of multiple dealers, including Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher, who her daughter says "lived in the same apartment house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
