An Anxious, Abbreviated Week of London Auctions

On the Money
Pablo Picasso
“Tête de Femme (La Lectrice–Dora Maar)”
Est. £6.5–8.5 million ($12.8–16.8 million)
Sotheby’s Feb. 5 Impressionist & Modern evening sale

Provenance plays a starring role for this cover lot, which is being sold from the Berggruen Collection, or more precisely, the late, great dealer/connoisseur Heinz Berggruen. The ravishing portrait of Picassso’s mistress and muse was painted in April 1938 and had been on loan at the collector’s Museum Berggruen in Berlin. Picasso painted many representations of Maar, a noted Surrealist photographer and dark-haired beauty whose tempestuous relationship with the painter was bracketed by the Spanish Civil and Second World Wars.

Courtesy Sotheby's