A Mark Rothko painting formerly owned by the influential art dealer Robert Mnuchin sold at Sotheby’s on Thursday night for $85.8 million, just barely failing to re-set the Abstract Expressionist’s auction record. Still, the painting is officially the second-most expensive Rothko ever sold at auction.
Rothko’s Color Field paintings of the postwar era regularly sell for vast sums at auction. But few have sold for quite as much as Brown and Blacks in Reds, the 1957 abstraction that was auctioned this week as part of a sale devoted to Mnuchin’s collection. It is one of the most expensive artworks to be sold by any auction house this week in New York.
Ahead of the sale, Sotheby’s said on its website that the painting had both a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, both of which ensured that this work would be sold. Yet, because Sotheby’s does not publicly announce the amounts for its irrevocable bids in advance of its auctions, it was not certain whether the painting would sell within its $70 million–$100 million estimate or exceed it.
Brown and Blacks in Reds ended up falling short of the upper end of that estimate it by quite a bit. It hammered at $74 million, putting it toward the lower end of its expected range. However, with premium fees accounted for, the painting rose in value to $85.8 million. That result was enough to earn applause from within the Sotheby’s salesroom.
One reason the painting was so highly sought after was its provenance. It debuted at Sidney Janis Gallery, a taste-making space that boosted the profile of the Abstract Expressionists, and it then entered the collection of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., which hung it in the lobby of its eponymous Manhattan headquarters.
In 2003, Vivendi, the conglomerate that purchased the Seagram company in 2001, consigned the painting to auction at Christie’s, where it sold for $6.7 million. It was one of two Rothkos purchased by Mnuchin that night. The other, the much larger painting No. 9 (White and Black on Wine), from 1958, sold for $16.3 million, then a record for Rothko. “They are both fabulous pictures,” Mnuchin told the New York Times at the time.
Since then, Rothko’s auction record has ballooned greatly. His benchmark still sits at $86.9 million, as minted by the Christie’s sale of Orange, red, yellow (1961) in 2012.
Mnuchin, who ran an Upper East Side gallery under his name before his death in 2025, also held many other notable artworks, 11 of which hit the block at Sotheby’s on Thursday. Alongside the Rothko, there were paintings by Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, and Franz Kline, as well as a sculpture by Jeff Koons. All of those works sold.
