Sotheby's To Offer $90 Million From Richard Hedreen Collection

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Sotheby's is set to auction approximately 50 artworks from the collection of Seattle real estate developer Richard“Dick” Hedreen this fall and winter. The series of sales is expected to achieve at least $90 million.

This initiative follows Hedreen's 2024 pledge of his and his late wife Betty's art collection to Seattle University, along with a $25 million foundational gift for a new art museum. The family stated that the sale is not a reversal of this gift, but rather a strategy to help fund its realization.

The university is slated to receive around 350 works, including paintings by Willem de Kooning, Rashid Johnson, Amy Sherald, Cecily Brown, and Jonas Wood, as well as Old Master pieces by Bronzino, Jacopo Pontormo, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Thomas Gainsborough. According to a source close to the process, Hedreen and his family collaborated with an art historian from Seattle University to carefully select which works would be vital for the university and which could be sold. The university ultimately acquired most of its desired pieces.

The collection is notable for its blend of contemporary art and Old Masters, often displayed together. The Hedreens began collecting in Seattle, becoming involved with the Seattle Art Museum's Contemporary Art Council in the 1970s. Their interest in Old Masters developed later, leading to a collection spanning from the 15th century to the present.

Leading the Sotheby's contemporary offerings is Roy Lichtenstein's Reflections on“Painter and Model” (1990), with an estimate of $20 million to $30 million. The painting, owned by the Hedreens for over three decades, references Picasso's 1928 Painter and Model at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Its auction follows the recent opening of“Roy Lichtenstein: Like New,” an artist retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Another significant contemporary piece in the sale is Cecily Brown's 12-foot-wide Untitled (Shipwreck) (2017), estimated at $7 million to $10 million. This painting is part of a series Brown created between 2016 and 2018, exploring 19th-century Romantic painting, particularly Delacroix's The Shipwreck of Don Juan (1840) and Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19).

The Old Masters will be featured in a separate sale at Sotheby's New York in February. Among them is Georg Pencz's 16th-century Portrait of Sigismund Baldinger, estimated at $8 million to $12 million. This painting remained with Baldinger's descendants for over 370 years before joining the Herzog Collection. It was looted during World War II and repatriated to the heirs of Baron András Herzog by Germany in 2010. That same year, it sold at auction for £5.6 million, then approximately $8.5 million, establishing a record for Pencz.

Also presented in February is Bartolomeo Cavarozzi's The Sacrifice of Isaac (ca. 1617), with an estimate of $7 million to $10 million. Rediscovered in 1987, the painting was initially attributed to Caravaggio before scholars concluded it was by Cavarozzi. It last sold at Sotheby's in 2014 for £3.7 million ($6.3 million), then a record for the artist.

Additional major Old Master works include Titian's The Mater Dolorosa (ca. 1550–55), estimated at $4 million to $6 million, and Gaetano Gandolfi's The Birth of Venus (1770), estimated at $2 million to $3 million.

When the gift was announced in 2024, the entire collection was widely valued at around $300 million, though this estimate pertained to approximately 200 works. The 50 works Sotheby's is now selling represent roughly one-eighth of the collection by number, with the remaining 350 pieces forming the core of the university's new museum.

The Hedreen family stated:“Seattle University has long held a special place in our lives, and our commitment to it remains as strong as ever.” They added that the sold works were chosen in consultation with the university, ensuring that the remaining collection still possesses the“landmark works, historical depth and variety of artistic voices” intended for the museum.

We previously reported:

Christie's will auction British collector Peter Simon's art collection, valued at up to £127 million, featuring works by Bacon, Mondrian, and Warhol.

Source: ARTnews

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