Further highlighting the sale is Claude Monet’s Vernon, Soleil (estimate $4/6 million), a classic example of the artist’s innovative style in creating an evocative atmosphere that was no longer purely a vehicle to capture his en plein air naturalism, but instead ventured to fulfill his pursuit of an increasingly abstract vision. After moving to the village of Giverny in Normandy in 1883, Monet dedicated himself to documenting the surrounding countryside and began returning to the same motif at different times of day, in different weather conditions and seasons. Executed in 1894, the present painting is part of a series of seven canvases focused on the Gothic church in Vernon, and is the crowning achievement from the group in which the bright light transfigures the structure of the church, making it appear as ephemeral as the reflections on the water and invoking a beautifully mystical setting. Monet reflected on his first paintings of Vernon in the summer of that year, explaining: "I discovered the curious silhouette of a church, and I undertook to paint it. It was the beginning of summer… foggy fresh mornings were followed by sudden outbursts of sunshine whose hot rays could only slowly dissolve the mist surrounding every crevice of the edifice and covering the golden stones with an ideally vaporous envelope." Vernon, Soleil is being offered from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, and is being sold to support the Museum’s collections.

Executed in 1972, Barkley L. Hendricks’ Mr. Johnson (Sammy from Miami) (estimate $2/3 million) masterfully exemplifies the artists ability to encapsulate vibrant individuality, presenting a subject that is at once emotionally stirring, teeming with vitality, and entirely inscrutable. Having remained in the same family collection since 1973, the painting has remained entirely unseen by the public since Hendricks' Greenville County Museum of Art retrospective in 1975. The present work showcases the breadth of Hendricks’ practice and his photorealist style, derived from his tightly rendered brushstrokes, imbues the entirety of composition with an entrancing vividness. This portrait embodies the trademark style which marks Hendricks as truly peerless – marrying the superb formal qualities and techniques of the old masters he admired, including Caravaggio and Jan van Eyck, with the singular essence and panache of the figures he depicts, Hendricks forged a revolutionary artistic precedent. Sotheby’s has established numerous benchmarks for Hendricks’ work at auction, including the artist’s auction record for Yocks (sold for $3.7 million in 2019), as well as holding the top 10 prices for the artist at auction. The present work follows strong recent sales of Hendricks’ work in New York from the November Contemporary Art Day Sale (Jackie Sha-La-La (Jackie Cameron) which sold for $2.8 million) and Contemporary Curated in October (Latin From Manhattan...The Bronx Actually which sold for $1.5 million).

Edvard Munch's Bjørk i snø (Birch in Snow) (estimate $3/4 million) is one of only two works by the artist remaining in private hands from a small group of nine winter landscapes painted at the very end of 1900 and the beginning of 1901. Encapsulating Munch’s Expressionist opus while foreshadowing his growing interest in the landscape of his native Norway, Bjørk i snø utilizes one of Munch’s most powerful compositional devices: the lone vertical figure as a mysterious and emotionally evocative center point of a semi-abstracted background. As one of the key pioneers of Expressionism, Munch used the genre of landscape as a vehicle to express inner states of being. In depicting nature in a highly individual, internalized manner, and draws on the tradition of stemningsmaleri, or “mood-painting,” characteristic of Nordic art towards the end of the nineteenth century. Bjørk i snø captures Munch’s use of bold coloration, sharp perspective and sinuous line, and showcases how Munch abandoned plein-air naturalism, which had dominated Norwegian landscape painting, in favor of an emotionally charged and resonant vision of nature.

The "Laakmolen" Near The Hague by Vincent Van Gogh (estimate $2/3 million) captured Van Gogh’s formative time spent in The Hague, and the subject matter of a Dutch windmill held sentimental importance for the artist, who had visited it with his younger brother Theo years earlier. Prior to the execution of the present work, Van Gogh focused primarily on developing his study of the human figure. But by 1882, the year the present work was executed, the artist began to shift his focus and, instilled with a renewed sense of confidence, Van Gogh began to devote himself to the study of landscapes and enhance his draughtsmanship, paving the way for the introduction of color and more advanced rendering of depth present in The 'Laakmolen' near The Hague. The present work is an excellent example of how Van Gogh was already forging his own style, freeing himself from the restraints of the previous generation. In the artist’s delicate handling of color and the complex compositional arrangement of the work, The “Laakmolen” near The Hague is testament to his unique artistic vision.