Christie’s will sell more than 70 works from the collection of Arnold and Joan Saltzman during its fall marquee sales in November.
The modern art collection includes works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Edvard Munch, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore, and has a group estimate “in excess of $70 million,” per the house. Collected over 60 years, the works will be featured at Christie’s 20th century evening sale on November 17.
The top lot is Léger’s Composition (Nature Morte), a 1914 painting from his celebrated “Contraste de formes” series, with an estimate “in the region” of $20 million.
The piece is from “one of the great series that Léger painted over the course of 1913 and 1914, as he explored the Cubist experiment and took it as far as he could toward abstraction,” Conor Jordan, Christie’s deputy chairman of the Impressionist and modern art department, told ARTnews. “It’s a thrilling object in itself and in its the story around it.”
Jordan said Composition comes from “the most sought after and highly prized and highly priced series in Léger’s career,” noting the artist record set at Christie’s when his Contraste de formes (1913) sold for $70.1 million with fees in November 2017.
Notably, Arnold Saltzman bought Composition at auction in the 1980s from the legendary art dealer, historian, and collector Douglas Cooper, who had purchased it in Paris in the 1930s. Cooper displayed it in his home with other of Léger’s works for many decades, including during a dinner with Pablo Picasso. Jordan said it was “magical” that Cooper had held onto it for so long.
Douglas Cooper’s ‘Léger Room’ at the Château de Castille, ca. 1955. Participants (visible) L-R: Mme. Zette Leiris, unknown woman, Mme. Jean Hugo, John Richardson, Douglas Cooper, Pablo Picasso, Mme. Francine Weisweiler, Jean Cocteau, Michel Leiris, unknown woman, and Jean Hugo (back to camera). Photographer unknown. Artwork: ©2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Henry Moore’s Reclining Woman: Elbow (1981) has an estimate of $9 million to $12 million. Jordan called the 94-inch bronze sculpture the “quintessence” of Moore’s practice and noted that Arnold Saltzman was a “very diligent collector” in pursuing its purchase.
“He flew to London and drove out to Moore’s home and studio in Hertfordshire, hoping to persuade Moore to sell him the work,” Arnold and Joan Saltzman’s son Eric said in a press release. “Moore demurred, explaining that all his finished work went directly to his Foundation, and he didn’t control their disposition. Arnold made several more visits, each time bringing the particular Israeli melons he’d learned Moore liked. Somehow, the Foundation found a way to free up the sculpture to sell to Arnold. I still have Henry Moore’s personal thank you note for the melons.”
Reclining Woman: Elbow used to sit outside the Saltzmans’ house at Sands Point on Long Island. Another edition of the sculpture has been on display outside the Leeds Art Gallery, on loan from the Foundation, since 1982. Yet another edition of the piece sold in 2008 for $3.89 million, including fees, at Christie’s. Jordan said works by Moore “have performed very strongly at auction in recent years.”
Henri Matisse’s Femme au chapeau fleuri (1923). CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2025
Rounding out the eight-figure lots is Henri Matisse’s Femme au chapeau fleuri (1923), a portrait of the artist’s favorite model from his time in Nice, Henriette Darricarrère, with an estimate “in the region of $10 million.”
Among the lower priced lots from the Saltzman collection that will be sold during Christie’s day sales on November 18 are “an exceedingly rare painting” by the German painter Wilhelm Morgner, who died in World War I, in 1917, at just 26; as well as Robert Delaunay’s Portrait de Jean Metzinger (1904) and Metzinger’s Portrait of Robert Delaunay (1906), each with an estimate in the region of $1.5 million.
Notably, the two portraits were painted and displayed adjacent to each other in Paris at the Salon d’Automne of 1906. Arnold Saltzman bought them separately and reunited them many years later. “Hanging them together in our exhibition will be a real thrill to see two artists paying tribute to one another,” Jordan said.
Robert Delaunay, Portrait de Jean Metzinger (1904). CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2025
“I think their appeal will extend beyond that dedicated cohort of near Impressionist collectors, and could fire the imagination of collectors who don’t necessarily concentrate on that part of the world and or that part of the market,” Jordan said.
Arnold Saltzman was a businessman and US diplomat who was appointed by three US presidents to assignments in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Central and South America, and Austria. He was also a trustee of the Baltimore Museum and the founding president of the Nassau County Museum of Art.
Joan Saltzman, a graduate of Barnard College, was an activist, advocate, and community organizer in pursuit of social justice. She founded or cofounded multiple organizations, including the Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center at Hofstra University.
