Renoir: Bal du Moulin de la Galette

Public Domain Photo: Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876), oil on canvas painting of dimensions 131 cm x 175 cm (52 in x 69 in) currently housed at Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Bal du Moulin de la Galette (commonly referred to as ‘Le Moulin de la Galette’ or ‘Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette’) by the acclaimed French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), is considered one of the most celebrated masterpieces of Impressionism.

In this oil painting created in 1876, Renoir depicts a typical impressionist scene of a social gathering on a Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre district of Paris, where working class people, dressed up in their best outfits, loved to celebrate the evenings by eating galettes, drinking, dancing, and meeting other Parisians. Also, Renoir recreated the late 19th century real Parisian life in Bal du Moulin de la Galette, though his style is typically Impressionist, but rich in color, form, and typical fluidity of his brushstrokes.

Bal du Moulin de la Galette came in the collection of Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in 1896, and in 1929 it was transferred to the Musée du Louvre, and in 1986 it was transferred to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it is still located.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir also created a SMALLER VERSION (78 cm x 114 cm) of “Bal du Moulin de la Galette” with the same title and it is in private collection. It was earlier in the collection of American millionaire and U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, John Hay Whitney. After his death, his widow Betsey Roosevelt Whitney (an American philanthropist and the ex-wife of James Roosevelt) sold the painting for US$78,100,000 at an auction Sotheby's (New York City) to the Japanese business tycoon Ryoei Saito (Saito Ryoei) in May 1990.

In 1991 Saito created an international outcry by declaring that he wished to cremate the painting (which is the fifth most expensive painting ever sold after adjusting for dollar value as per consumer price index), with him when he would be dead, along with Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Portrait of Dr. Gachet’, which also Saito purchased for a record price of US$82.5 million.

Ryoei Saito’s desire to cremate Bal du Moulin de la Galette could not be fulfilled as his bankers, who held the painting as collateral security against his loans, sold the painting through Sotheby's to an unknown buyer, when Saito and his business empire went broke.

Now, though the painting’s ownership and location are uncertain, it is believed to be owned by a Swiss art collector.

Amadeo Modigliani: Nude Sitting on a Divan

Public Domain Image: Nude Sitting on a Divan (The Beautiful Roman Woman) oil on canvas painting (1917) by Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920), dimensions 100 cm x 60 cm (39.4 in x 25.6in), currently in private collection

‘Nude Sitting On A Divan’ (also known as ‘The Beautiful Roman Woman’, ‘Weiblicher Akt’ and ‘Nu féminin’), an oil on canvas painting by the Italian artist Amadeo Modigliani, was sold at an auction in New York on 2 November 2010 for US$68.9 million, the highest ever price for a Modigliani painting. Previously, this Modigliani painting was sold in 1999 at Sotheby's for $16.7 million, which was the highest price for any of his paintings at that time, and also surpassed the previous record of $52.6 million for a sculpture by Modigliani.

‘Nude Sitting on a Divan’, counted as one among the most expensive paintings sold ever, is believed to be one of a series of nudes created by Modigliani in 1917. These nudes created quite a sensation when they were on exhibition in Paris in 1917, which was Amadeo Modigliani’s only solo exhibition in his lifetime.

Kazimir Malevich: Suprematist Composition

Public Domain Image: Suprematist Composition, oil on canvas painting (1916), dimensions 88.5 cm x 71 cm (34.8 in x 28 in), by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935).

Kazimir Malevich’s magnum opus Suprematist Composition (blue rectangle over the red beam), representing a geometrical figures and vibrant colors in space, was sold on November 3, 2008 at an auction at Sotheby's in New York City for just over US$60 million. The purchase by an anonymous buyer set the world record for Suprematist Composition as the most expensive work in Russian art.

Kazimir Malevich, also known by alternatively spelt names such as Kasimir Malewitsch and Kazimierz Malewicz, is considered the pioneer of Geometric Abstract art or Geometric Abstraction, also known as Suprematism.

Portrait of Ria Munk III by Gustav Klimt sold for £18.8 million

Image: Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III) an oil and charcoal on canvas work created by a leading Viennese artist at the turn of the 20th century Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), sold at Christie’s London for £18.8 million on June 23, 2010 – image scanned from an art catalogue.

The full length portrait Ria Munk III (Frauenbildnis) depicts a wealthy young Jewish girl, Ria Munk, niece of Klimt’s major patron Serena Lederer. Ria Munk committed suicide after a row her lover in 1911. Monk’s mother Aranka commissioned Klimt to paint a deathbed portrait of the girl, after his first two efforts were rejected by the family. He began work on Ria Munk III in 1917, painting it in bright colors and showing Ria in repose against a richly decorative background.

After Klimt’s death the following year, the painting hung in the Austrian industrialist family’s lakeside villa at Bad Aussee until 1941. During the Second World War, as part of Hitler’s Ethnic Cleansing plan, that later became notorious as the Holocaust in which an estimated six million Jews were murdered, Nazis captured the house and all the belongings of the Munk Family and ejected them from their property because they were Jewish.

The portrait passed to William Gurlitt, an art dealer. In 1953, Ria Munk III was donated to a gallery in Linz, that later became the Lentos Museum where the portrait remained till last year when it was voluntarily returned to the heirs of the Munk family who had sent it for sale at Christie's on June 23.

Portrait of Ria Munk III sold for £18.8 million, more than its estimated price -- £14-18 million ($20-26 million). According to Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie’s director of Impressionist and Modern art, ‘the picture was only the second or third comparable example of the artist’s work to be offered at auction over the past 20 years’.

Works by Klimt are on the list of the world’s most expensive paintings. According to reports, collector Ronald Lauder purchased Klimt’s 1907 ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I’ for his New York-based Neue Galerie in 2006 for $144.8 million.