Marlene Dumas’s Miss January sold for US$13.6 million at Christie’s New York on 14 May, setting a new record for the most expensive painting by a living female artist ever sold at auction. The previous record was set in 2018, when Jenny Saville’s Propped fetched US$12.4 million at Sotheby's London.
Auctioneer Yü-Ge Wang opened bidding at US$9 million. The painting drew strong interest from both in-room bidders and phone banks, with the winning bid placed by Sara Friedlander, Deputy Chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Art, on behalf of a telephone client with paddle number 7168.
Miss January was offered as part of Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale, which achieved a total hammer price of US$79.6 million (US$96.4 million with fees), exceeding its low estimate of US$77.4 million. Originally, 43 lots were offered, but four were withdrawn before the sale, meaning of the 39 lots on offer 36 found new owners, resulting in a strong sell-through rate of 92.3%.
While the highest-selling lot of the evening was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Baby Boom, which achieved US$23.4 million, the strong performance of female artists was notable, including the third-highest selling lot, Cecily Brown's Bedtime Story, which went for US$6.2 million. Three of the four records set were for female artists, including Simone Leigh and Emma McIntyre, and 5 of the top 7 lots were works by women. Another artist's record was set for Louis Fratino.
Lot 21 B | Marlene Dumas (b.1953) | Miss January, Oil on canvas (Auction records for a living female artist and South African artist)
Painted in 1997
280 x 100 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2000
Estimate: US$12,000,000-18,000,000
Hammer Price: US$11,500,000
Sold: US$13,635,000
Thus, the current standings for the record of the most expensive painting by a living female artist are:
- Marlene Dumas (b.1953) | Miss January (1997) | Sold: US$13.6 million, Christie's New York, 2025
- Jenny Saville (b.1970) | Propped (1992) | Sold: US$12.6 million, Sotheby's London, 2018
- Julie Mehretu (b.1970) | Walkers With the Dawn and Morning (2008) | Sold: US$10.7 million Sotheby's New York, 2023
As for the most expensive painting of all time by a female artist, that goes to Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed / White Flower no. 1, which was sold by Sotheby’s in 2014 and went for US$44.4 million.
In addition to setting the record for the most expensive artist by a living female artist, this Duma painting broke her prior artist record set back in 2023 at Art Basel Miami, when her work The Schoolboys sold for US$9 million.
This work also set the record for the most expensive painting by a South African, a record held by Dumas since at least 2008, but she has mixed feelings on that subject, as in 2015 she told The Guardian that “It had a strange force. In South Africa, you weren’t proud to be an artist; it felt egocentric. I was a bit ashamed,” adding that she wasn’t a fan of the attention it drew.
Jenny Saville | Propped (1992) | Sold for £9.5 million (around US$12.6 million) by Sotheby's London, 2018
Miss January's painter the Netherlands-based South African Painter Marlene Dumas
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953, Dumas studied art extensively, even relocating to the Netherlands in the late 1970s to attend both art school and study psychology at university, fitting as much of her work revolves around the themes of people, their identity, state of mind, and emotions.
Dumas often bases her work on photographs, specifically Polaroids of friends or lovers; she then further references often explicit magazines, merging them with the photos to create her works. Miss January, for example, was based on a pornographic magazine's fullspread pages of a model.
She often highlights femininity, sexuality, and race as key themes in her art, but these are meshed in with more abstract emotions and ideas, such as violence, tenderness, innocence, and guilt, many of which are total opposites to one another.
As for this work in particular, it harkens back to even before Dumas’ formal art training. The title Miss January references a drawing she made when she was 10, titled Miss World, a 1988 self-portrait, Misinterpreted, and her first-ever survey exhibition in 1992, titled Miss Interpreted, held in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
A business card from Dumas, which on this side shows a copy of the drawing of Miss World from when she was 10
The prior owner of Miss January was the Rubell Family Collection. Don and Mera Rubell married in 1964, and that same year started setting aside US$25 a week to collect art, mainly from small and unknown artists due to their constrained budget. As the years passed, they came into more money, allowing them to build their collection, with them owning works by Yayoi Kusama, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, among many others.
From their humble beginnings, the Rubell Family Collection, now known as the Rubell Museum, has a total of 7400 works as well as two facilities, with one located in Miami and the other in Washington, D.C.
The Rubells are also not interested in buying art to sell, with Don telling the New York Times that “In 50 years of collecting, we’ve put together over 5,000 pieces, and we’ve sold less than 20,” back in 2013.
Lot 7 B | Cecily Brown (b.1969) | Bedtime Story, Oil on linen
Painted in 1999
191.1 x 191.1 cm
Provenance:
- Gagosian Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1999
Estimate: US$4,000,000-6,000,000
Hammer Price: US$5,100,000
Sold: US$6,221,000
Bidding for the painting opened at US$3 million and quickly rose, drawing interest from both the crowd and clients on the phones with Christie’s specialists. In the end, it was a bidding war between two in-room collectors that stole the show, driving the price up to its final hammer. The winner with the paddle number 561 will pay a total of US$6.2 million after fees, exceeding the low estimate, and becoming the third most expensive painting sold at the auction.
Born in London in 1969, Brown is a figurative and abstract artist who came from a family of three painters. She studied art in the UK before moving to New York, where she had her first solo show in 1997 called Spectacle and featured six paintings of rabbits. This was a breakout debut since it was there that Charles Saatchi, the famous advertising mogul and gallery owner, purchased her works and, by proxy, launched Brown’s career.
Brown’s style has been heavily influenced by Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning. This can be seen through her brushstrokes and her very busy canvas. She explores the relationships between men and women in highly abstract ways, seeking to dissolve any real semblance of the subjects in order to play with the way her audiences interpret her work.
When Brown starts working on a canvas, she never quite knows in what direction it’ll end up going. Although she always works with certain ideas in her mind, in particular the sexual desires and emotions of her subjects, she seeks to portray that feeling in various ways through her art. This is best seen through her usage of rich colors, such as the dominance of reds and pinks in Bedtime Story, which is combined with her animated brushwork that gives her work a sense of tension.
As for the name of this painting, like many of Brown’s paintings, she names them after classic movies from Hollywood. Bedtime Story shares its name with a 1964 comedy starring Marlon Brando.
Lot 24 B | Simone Leigh (b.1967) | Sentinel IV, Bronze (Auction record for the artist)
Executed in 2020
325.1 x 63.5 x 38.1 cm
Provenance:
- Hauser & Wirth, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2020
Estimate: US$3,500,000-5,500,000
Hammer Price: US$4,700,000
Sold: US$5,737,000
In one of the more intense bidding sessions of the night, bidding started at US$2.6 million, with bidding never slowing throughout the session. At least three telephone bidders were interested in the lot were interested in the lot, with them all being represented by Christie’s staff on the phones. At the end, it was Deputy Chairman & Head of Client Advisory Americas, Maria C. Los, who won the lot for her client after eight minutes of bidding, buying it for US$5.7 million and setting an auction record for the artist.
An American artist hailing from Chicago, Simone Leigh’s work is predominantly in the visual arts of sculpture, installations, video, and social performances. She gained a passion for art after interning at the National Museum of African Art in D.C. This links in with her art’s main focus on history and personal politics, with a keen interest in African and African-American art.
She gravitates to these topics as she views her work through the lenses of philosophy, cultural studies, and ethnography. As such, her works contain heavy African motifs and materials. This work in particular makes use of African sculpting, similar to that of sub-Saharan sculptures of women from around the 19th and early 20th centuries, while meshed with a tool. These hybrid forms were often used as spiritual or ceremonial objects in West and Southern Africa, but Leigh uses them to explore Black femme subjectivity.
Leigh’s work has been praised and considered socially relevant. She was the first Black woman to be featured at the Venice Biennale art show, and her art often serves to make a social point. Sentinel IV was created to be sold by the Swiss Gallery Hauser & Wirth for the express purpose of raising funds to support the non-profit Color Of Change that combats racial injustice in the US.
Lot 43 B | Emma McIntyre (b.1990) | Up bubbles her amorous breath, Oil and oilstick on linen (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 2021
182.9 x 213.4 cm
Provenance:
- Air de Paris, Paris
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: US$50,000-70,000
Hammer Price: US$160,000
Sold: US$201,600
The bidding for this lot, with there already being some interest in it from an absentee bidder, started at US$48,000. There was heavy interest in the lot from the start, with a flurry of bids just worth US$5000 or US$10,000 rapidly driving up the price. Clients on the phones were the lot's main bidders, with Maria C. Los again winning the lot for her client, this one with the panel number 2541. The client will pay US$201,600, over four times the initial low estimate, while also setting a new record for the artist.
A New Zealand artist born in 1990, she studied art in the country before basing herself in Los Angeles. The focus of her work is on visual abstraction, while also experimenting more with the materials she uses in her work. McIntyre makes use of materials such as oxidized iron, mixing them into the oils that she uses to paint her landscapes.
As such, her work is designed to be fueled by this alchemic and aggressive energy that manifests in her abstract pieces that are meant to expand and challenge our notions of what a traditional landscape painting is. She often bases her paintings on her study of art history and then abstracts that knowledge and puts it through a transformative process that becomes her paintings.
Other Highlighted Lots:
Lot 23 B | Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) | Baby Boom, Acrylic, oilstick, and paper collage on canvas mounted on tied wood supports
Executed in 1982
125 x 123.5 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
- Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo
- Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris
- Private collection, New York
- Anon. sale; Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, New York, 15 May 2001, lot 31
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: US$20,000,000-30,000,000
Hammer Price: US$20,000,000
Sold: US$23,410,000
Lot 5 B | Ed Ruscha (b.1937) | Blast Curtain, Acrylic on canvas
Painted in 1999
162.6 x 162.6 cm
Provenance:
- Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2000
Estimate: US$4,000,000-6,000,000
Hammer Price: US$4,600,000
Sold: US$5,616,000
Lot 35 B | Yayoi Kusama (b.1929) | Infinity-Nets [HSO], Acrylic on canvas
Painted in 2016
194 x 259 cm
Provenance:
- OTA Fine Arts, Tokyo
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2016
Estimate: US$2,500,000-3,500,000
Hammer Price: US$3,000,000
Sold: US$3,680,000
Lot 17 B | Louis Fratino (b.1993) | You and Your Things, Oil on canvas (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 2022
144.8 x 198.1 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Neu, Berlin
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: US$600,000-800,000
Hammer Price: US$600,000
Sold: US$756,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Christie's New York
Sale: 21st Century Evening Sale
Date: 14 May 2025
Number of Lots: 42
Lots Sold: 36
Lots Unsold: 6
Sell Rate: 85.7%
Sale Total: US$96,463,700