Sotheby’s will auction a $55-million trove of works from Hunk and Moo Anderson’s blue-chip collection.
Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson. Photo by David Butow, courtesy Sotheby’s.
Clyfford Still’s 1947-Y-No.1 (1947) and a pair of pieces by Mark Rothko are among 26 works from the collection of Mary Margaret “Moo” and Harry “Hunk” Anderson hitting the auction block at Sotheby’s New York sales in May. The pieces, which are expected to bring upwards of $55 million collectively, will be the second batch of works from the late couple’s collection to be sold at auction. Christie’s won a consignment of around 200 pieces after the 2018 death of Hunk Anderson, who made his fortune in college campus catering; those sales totaled $49.9 million. This latest group was consigned to Sotheby’s following Moo Anderson’s death in October.
Clyfford Still, 1947-Y-No. 1, 1947. Est. $25 million–35 million. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
The collection is notable for the inclusion of the Still painting, which comes with a pre-sale estimate of $25 million to $35 million. The painter was notoriously controlling, tightly regulating the primary market for his works so collectors had to buy from him directly between 1951 until his death in 1980. Most of Still’s work resides in the collection of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. A press release from Sotheby’s describes the upcoming sale of 1947-Y-No.1 as a “major market moment.” In November, another major Still painting from the 1940s, PH-399 (1946) was offered at Sotheby’s evening sale of post-war and contemporary art in New York, where it eclipsed its high estimate of $18 million to sell for $24.3 million.
Henry Moore, Reclining Connected Forms, 1969. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
Other highlights from the Andersons’ collection coming to auction at Sotheby’s include Rothko’s Green, Blue, Green (1969) and Untitled (1945), Sam Francis’s Deep Blue, Yellow, Red (1956), Richard Diebenkorn’s View from the Porch (1959), and Henry Moore’s Reclining Connected Forms (1969).
