Big names at surprising prices: Christie’s must-have finds under $50,000

Idyllic beach scenes are a quintessential part of Eugène Boudin’s oeuvre. One of the first artists to paint en plein air, Boudin, whom Claude Monet hailed as his ‘Master’, was one of the most important precursors of Impressionism. Shunning his studio, he devoted himself to the depiction of the natural world, or in his words, to ‘the simple beauties of nature,’ capturing the changing atmospheric conditions and light effects of the northern coastline of France. Instead of just depicting the rural landscape, Boudin also turned his brush to fashionable visitors in their finery along the boardwalk and beaches.

American artist Elizabeth Peyton is known for her small-format portraits of nonchalant subjects, ranging from musicians to artists. During the late 1990s she drew several works featuring David Hockney, whom she found endlessly inspiring. Peyton once said, ‘I think I'm always looking for something to believe in, and the story of David Hockney and what he did is something I very much believe in. You know, what he was doing at that time in the ’70s wasn’t the most fashionable thing to be doing, making pictures of people, and to be making figurative artwork, and he just believed in it and did it. And I thought that was very inspiring. And I guess maybe I found a little of myself in that story, too.’

The theme of the bather fixing her hair is a timeless subject which has occupied artists for centuries. Aristide Maillol was fascinated by this motif, as evidenced in his earliest sculpture conceived during the late 1890s, after he turned his attention from tapestries. Maillol notably revisited the subject during the late 1920s, when the famous Danish patron Johannes Rump asked him to create another version of the sculpture. A larger example of this work, Baigneuse debout se coiffant, stands amongst the statuary displayed in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.

Encapsulating Gerhard Richter’s penchant for blurring the line between abstraction and representation, this work was gifted by the artist to the legendary gallerist and collector Marian Goodman. While a group of seven paintings by Richter will open Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale — renamed this season as Marian's Richters & the 21st Century Evening Sale — there will also be opportunities to acquire the German artist’s creations at a multitude of price points, such as this mixed-media work. All reflect Goodman’s nearly four-decade relationship with one of the most important painters of the post-war period.

Drawn in 1941 shortly after his arrival in New York, A la Troisième Avenue belongs to George Grosz’s celebrated suite of illustrations for Ben Hecht’s 1001 Afternoons in New York. Having first met in Berlin in 1918, their 1941 collaboration reflects a longstanding artistic dialogue, culminating in Grosz’s production of 86 large-scale illustrations for Hecht’s book at the height of wartime displacement. Depicted in the present work, M. Le Moal’s café on Third Avenue becomes a stage for émigré life: sailors, refugees and exiles gathered in a fragile enclave of memory and resilience.

Barnett Newman is widely regarded as one of the most profound and influential artists of the 20th century. In contrast to the gestural abstraction of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, Newman gained his pictorial force by producing large, expansive fields of pure pigment. The present screenprint on Plexiglas reflects the artist’s uncompromising vision, combining minimalism and saturated hues. While completing his final historic series of paintings in 1969, Newman wrote: ‘I had, therefore, the double incentive of using these colors to express what I wanted to do—of making these colors expressive rather than didactic and of freeing them from the mortgage. Why should anybody be afraid of red, yellow, and blue?’

In 1878, the English painter Frank Hyde introduced John Singer Sargent to Rosina Ferrara, a young local artist’s model, during his visit to Capri, off the coast of Naples, Italy. The artist, just 22 at the time, became immediately entranced by Rosina who features prominently in his works from this year, including masterworks such as A Capriote (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and View of Capri (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven).

This early ceramic plate by Pablo Picasso reflects the artist’s enduring preoccupation with bullfighting. A lifelong aficionado of the heroism and pathos of the bullfight, Picasso immortalised the corrida in nearly every form of media throughout his career. This vibrant plate depicts the moment that the horse-mounted picador provokes the bull by piercing its neck. ‘The Spanish poet Rafael Alberti wrote of Picasso, ‘The best matador who ever existed. His paintbrush is like a sword dipped in the blood of all the colors.’

Conceived in 1944, Tortue emerged during a pivotal period in Max Ernst’s career that resulted in many of his seminal Surrealist works. Having fled Europe during the Second World War, Ernst settled in the United States and, during the summer of 1944, rented a beach house in Great River, Long Island. During this time, he became immersed in sculpture, creating masterpieces such as Le roi jouant avec la reine (1944). From the collection of esteemed philanthropist Joanna Carson, Tortue depicts a turtle perched atop a bench and showcases Ernst's deft fusion of organic forms with a primitive aesthetic.