November is Modern Month at Bonhams, during which a variety of exceptional portraits will be going under the hammer across our international network. Illustrating key periods of Modern Art, we talked to our Specialists about their top portraits of the season.

Chaïm Soutine,
La femme en rouge sur fond bleu

Expressionism: Germany, Austria and Beyond

Frederick Millar, Specialist, Impressionist and Modern Art: In La femme en rouge sur fond bleu, Chaïm Soutine portrays a woman with unparalleled emotion and intimacy. Blending the most important colours in Soutine's work, red and blue, and bringing together the artist's modern and traditional artistic influences, it is the quintessence of Soutine's psychological portraits.

Its whirlwind of raw red brushstrokes interestingly recalls Soutine’s famous Carcasse de bœuf (1925). Despite its chaos and harshness, though, sensitivity and empathy prevail: the portrait’s distorted perspective deliberately forces the viewer to perceive and empathise with the sitter’s state of mind, which is betrayed through her frowning eyebrows and tightly-clasped hands.

Painted in 1928, La femme en rouge sur fond bleu draws on a wide array of inspirations - spanning Rembrandt, Renaissance portraits, and Amedeo Modigliani - whilst demonstrating the artist's refinement of the Expressionist portrait during the late 1920s.

Egon Schiele,
Sitzende Frau

Expressionism: Germany, Austria and Beyond

Frederick Millar, Specialist, Impressionist and Modern Art: Expressionism was characterised by a deep exploration of identity, of individual inward analysis and questioning, and an unwavering scrutinization of a rapidly modernising world. In Austria, Egon Schiele was by far the movement's foremost exponent, swiftly leading him to become one of the twentieth century's most prolific, confrontational, and challenging artists.

Schiele’s portraits are unabashed examinations of the vulnerability of the human figure whilst questioning identity, sexuality, spirituality and death. This work, titled Sitzende Frau (‘sitting woman’), shows Schiele’s fully-matured artistic prowess, its confident lines displaying precision and fluidity. The woman has begun to seductively remove her stocking from a cocked knee, whilst her hair is loosely bound; each element is rendered with a minimal line but conveys the tangibility of a finished painting.

This November Sitzende Frau, along with three additional works on paper by the artist, comes to auction for the very first time since its creation. Its sale in Expressionism: Germany, Austria and Beyond takes place alongside our non-selling major exhibition, The Unflinching Eye of Egon Schiele: Works of a Private Collector, which presents one of the UK's most extensive private collections of Egon Schiele’s works on paper.

Pablo Picasso,
Tête d'homme

Modern Art & Design at Bukowskis

Throughout his acclaimed career, Picasso’s prime subject was the human figure and portraiture remained a favourite genre. His portraits were typically completed from life and reveal a gifted ability to catch likeness whilst suggesting character and state of mind, as Tête d’homme illustrates with its deftness of line. By 1900, Picasso was producing portraits of astonishing variety and thereafter they reflected the full range of his innovative styles – symbolist, cubist, neoclassical, surrealist, and expressionist. However extreme his departure from representational conventions, though, Picasso never wholly abandoned portraits of classic beauty and naturalism.   

Duncan Grant,
Vanessa Bell in a Yellow Shawl

Modern British and Irish Art

Ingram Reid, Head of Sale, Modern British and Irish Art: This extremely rare portrait of Vanessa Bell by Duncan Grant is a dazzling painting which celebrates two of Britain’s earliest modernists. Bell and Grant were both members of the Bloomsbury group, active from 1907 until well into the 1920s. This portrait dates to around 1911-1912, shortly after a ground-breaking exhibition titled Manet and the Post Impressionists, the first U.K. public display of the movement, organised by fellow Bloomsbury artist and critic Roger Fry. Both Grant and Bell were trailblazers on British shores for their early embracement of the new Post-Impressionist style, and the application employed in this particular painting (referred to as ‘leopard manner’) is likely indebted to Matisse, Cézanne and Signac.

The complex dynamics among the notoriously Bohemian Bloomsbury Group defy labels, but throughout their lives Bell and Grant would maintain an incredibly close relationship, living together for many years at Charleston. Grant painted Bell (and vice versa) on several occasions, including his final portrait of her on her deathbed, but only a scarce few examples remain in private hands. A portrait of this quality has not been available at auction for the last thirty years, making this work's inclusion in our upcoming auction of Modern British and Irish Art a particularly exciting event.

Our Modern Month takes place this November. Find out more here.