Christie’s Offers Belgian Couple’s $54 Million Collection, Led by Magritte

Auction house Christie’s in London will offer a selection of modern and contemporary works by Belgian collecting couple Roger and Josette Vanthournout during its major auction week in March. The couple collected for six years, amassing a collection ranging from Symbolism, Belgian Expressionism and Surrealism to the post-war avant-garde, Minimalism and modern and contemporary British art.

The collection, which has a total estimated value of £40 million ($53.8 million), will be auctioned in the evening on March 5, in the day sale on March 6, and online from February 25 to March 12.

Roger Vanthournout was trained in design and decoration and founded a furniture manufacturing business. Josette Vanthournout is a painter. They began traveling extensively in the 1950s, initially collecting Chinese ceramics and Flemish Expressionism, and later moving on to Surrealism, Minimalism and postwar art.

“Spanning decades and movements, the collection reflects a bold and deeply personal vision of 20th- and 21st-century art,” Oliver Cau, the museum’s vice president for Impressionist and Modern art, said in press materials. “Beginning in the mid-1950s, it is inseparable from the story of Roger and Josette themselves: a designer and painter who collected together for more than half a century. Their postmodernist home in Belgium became a true Gesamtkunstwerk, conceived as a holistic work of art where architecture, design and fine art exist in constant dialogue. Rooted in Belgium’s long tradition as a cultural crossroads, their outward approach – shaped by travel and persistence. Curiosity – led to a collection of 100 Collection of various artists.”

Both works have a high estimate of £3.5 to £5.5 million ($4.7 to $7.4 million). Paintings by Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte air plain (1940) shows a tree composed of a single giant leaf, towering over a mountainous landscape under a cloudy sky. The following year the work was exhibited at the Dietrich Gallery in Brussels. This piece entered the market due to the high demand for Magritte’s works. The work set an auction record of $121.2 million at Christie’s New York in 2024 Light Empire (1949).

In the same price range is a sculpture by British icon Henry Moore Goslar Warrior (1973-74), depicts a reclining male figure, a rarity in the artist’s oeuvre. It is one of three sculptures, fronted by warrior with shield and fallen warriorBoth are from the 1950s and show the demise of a fighter jet. After Moore visited Greece in 1951, he was inspired by Greek sculpture.

Pablo Picasso’s paintings Nudity and Female Aid (1939) estimated to be worth £3 to £5 million ($4 to $6.7 million). After the outbreak of World War II, he fled Paris with the artist Dora Maar for the French coastal resort town of Royan. Maar is shown twice in shades of gray.

Several have been estimated at £2 to £3 million ($2.7 to $4 million). Yayoi Kusama’s paintings Infinite network (1960) was created shortly after her arrival in New York and comes from a series produced between 1958 and 1962. Works by Lucio Fontana Space concept, Attese (1964) is one of the artist’s famous works, in which he cuts the canvas with a knife. Agnes Martin’s Untitled #17 (1996) was created in Taos, New Mexico and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The artist will receive a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at next year’s Venice Biennale.

Paintings by Max Ernst Seshtuk (1921), estimated at £1.5 to 2.5 million ($2 to $3.4 million), depicts a desert landscape dominated by giant samovars. It shows a Surrealist sensibility, years before the formal emergence of the Surrealist movement.

Also on display are notable works by Lynn Chadwick, Jean Dubuffet, Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and Antony Gormley.

Selected works from the collection will be on display at Christie’s Brussels from January 27 to 28, Hong Kong from February 3 to 6, New York from February 10 to 13, Paris from February 18 to 20, and London from February 25.

Another group of Vanthournout works was auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York in 2006, when all 27 works were sold, “often at extremely high prices” because new york times According to reports at the time, some of the works set auction records, including works by Carl Andre and Robert Mangold.