Four Art Stories Worth a Coffee Break

A Nazi-looted Kandinsky finds a buyer. Earlier this month, Wassily Kandinsky’s The Colorful Life (1907) sold at Christie’s London for more than £31.5 million, nearly $42 million, after about six minutes of bidding. Christie’s had expected it to bring $24 million to $33 million. The dreamlike scene of brightly dressed figures in a fantasy landscape is considered an important marker in Kandinsky’s journey from figurative painter to abstract artist. It once belonged to Dutch Jewish industrialist Emanuel Lewenstein and his wife, Hedwig Lewenstein Weyermann, whose collection was sold at an Amsterdam auction in October 1940, five months after Germany invaded the Netherlands. After hanging in a Munich museum for about half a century, the painting was returned to the Lewensteins’ heirs in 2023, opening the way for the sale. Although the price exceeded expectations, it fell short of the $45 million paid for a Kandinsky at Sotheby’s in 2023. The buyer’s identity was not disclosed.

Joni Mitchell’s “protest song” for the eyes. The singer-songwriter, who says she retired from music “in order to pursue my first love, painting,” will release NEWS on Nov. 4. The book collects 23 political paintings that take on the 24-hour news cycle. “NEWS is my protest song — a song not for the ears, but for the eyes,” Mitchell writes. Standard and signed editions can be pre-ordered on her website, and several signed copies will be auctioned through Julien’s Publishing through Oct. 29, with proceeds going to charities including the ACLU and Save the Children.

A taste of Joni Mitchell’s artwork from her previous book, “Morning Glory on the Vine” (2019).

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A van Gogh unseen for more than 60 years. Vincent van Gogh’s Chestnut Trees in Blossom, painted during the highly productive yet tragic final months of his life, is heading to auction next month as part of a “legendary” private collection that also includes works by Cézanne and Renoir. It has not been seen in public in more than 60 years and is expected to sell for around $180 million—a potential record for a van Gogh work at auction.

“Chestnut Trees in Blossom” [“Châtaigniers en fleurs”], is expected to sell for $180 million at auction in November.

Monet’s long-hidden Iris heads to Paris. Painted in 1924 or ’25 and measuring about five by six feet, Iris is among the largest works Monet made in the last decade of his career. Until now, outsiders knew it only from black-and-white photographs. It is on view at Sotheby’s Paris, where it is estimated at $25 million to $34 million, which would make it the most expensive painting ever auctioned in France. “The painting has never been damaged or varnished,” says Monet expert Marianne Mathieu.

Iris leads Sotheby’s sale of the collection of Jeanne Schlumberger, who, according to Sotheby’s Thomas Bompard, “had a visionary eye” and loved the monumental late Monets. That taste was once controversial: when Monet died, Bompard says, some critics called the late works “artistic suicide.” Four Monets from the Schlumbergers’ collection, all out of public view since they were painted, will sell this month, alongside works by Cézanne, Courbet, and Camille Claudel.