An art collection worth an estimated $150 million that belonged to the late Texas oil and ranching heiress Anne Marion is going up for auction this spring in New York.
The collection includes works by American postwar artists like Andy Warhol, Clyfford Still, and Roy Lichtenstein. The collection is estimated to fetch a collective $150 million when it sells at auction in New York this spring. It will be sold across eight sales of work in various categories, including 20th century art, Old Masters, American art, and jewelry.
Together with her husband, John Marion, a former Sotheby’s chairman, Anne assembled a rare collection that has been largely unseen by the public for decades. Many of the works in the Marion estate have been out of the public eye since the 1970s and 1980s, when she first began acquiring art.
Among the top works to be sold are Warhol’s 1963 silver silkscreen painting Elvis 2 Times. The painting features a a double image of the rock ’n’ roll icon whose still came from a 1960s movie still, an homage to Marion’s ranching roots. Marion’s Elvis is estimated selling price is $20 million–$30 million. Clyfford Still’s PH-125 (1948-No. 1) (1948) carries an estimate of $25 million to $35 million
Other highlights include Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl With Beach Ball II (1977), which has an estimate of $12 million to $18 million, and Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park No. 40 (estimated at $20 million to $30 million), from the artist’s most sought-after series. Additionally, works by Franz Kline, Gerhard Richter, Robert Motherwell, Wayne Thiebaud, and Kenneth Noland sell at values between $4 million and $20 million.
A number of other works from her collection have been promised to the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, where she was the driving force behind a $65 million Tadao Ando-designed expansion in 2002.
Marion inherited Texas’s renowned Four Sixes Ranch from her great-grandfather, Captain Samuel Burk Burnett, the founder of the Burnett Oil company. She served as president of the ranch, chairman of Burnett Oil Company, and president of the Burnett Foundation, which funneled millions into art museums and education. “Unpretentious and proud of her rancher legacy and lifestyle, Anne was a bold-hearted Texan through-and-through,” Sotheby’s fine arts division chairman Amy Cappellazzo said in a statement.
Highlights from the estate slated for the first sale in May titled, “The Collection of an American Visionary,” will be showcased beginning March 10, starting in Palm Beach and traveling to Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Taipei, Hong Kong, London, and New York. Items of Marion’s personal jewelry collection will also be sold at prices between $15,000–$100,000.