Sotheby’s to auction 12 masterpieces from the Armand Hammer collection, estimated at up to $37 million

NEW YORK, September 28, 2026 – The auction house Sotheby’s has announced it will offer a selection of 12 works from the private collection of Armand Hammer, one of the most famous private collections of the 20th century, as artdaily reports. The pre-sale estimate for the group runs from $25 million to $37 million, while the proceeds from the auctions will benefit the Armand Hammer Foundation.

The series of sales will open with the Modern Evening Auction in New York this November, following a special preview in Los Angeles, and will continue with traveling exhibitions in Hong Kong (October 13–15) and Paris (October 19–23). The collection’s presentation will continue with the Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art sale in London in November, the Old Master & 19th Century Paintings Evening Auction in London in December, and will enter 2027 with Art of the Americas in January and Master Paintings & Works of Art in February, all in New York.

The two masterpieces headlining the November sales are Mary Cassatt’s Summertime (1894–95), estimated at $7–10 million, and Edgar Degas’ Trois danseuses (Jupes jaunes) (c. 1899), estimated at $10–15 million.

Summertime, a rare landscape by the only American artist to exhibit with the Impressionists in Paris, is considered by Sotheby’s to be the most important Cassatt to come to auction in the last 30 years and, perhaps, the finest example of her work ever to appear on the market. The painting depicts a woman and a small girl in a boat on a pond filled with ducks and was painted immediately after the purchase of the Château de Beaufresne, the artist’s summer home in the French countryside. Hammer bought the work at Parke-Bernet Galleries in 1971, where it set a record at the time both for Cassatt and for any woman artist.

Degas’ Trois danseuses (Jupes jaunes) is considered one of the finest examples of the artist’s late radical period, where in places the paint was applied directly with the fingers, and is widely thought to be the finest example still in private hands. Hammer bought it at Sotheby’s London in 1969 and it has remained under the care of Hammer and his foundation for more than fifty-five years.

The November series also includes Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Antibes (1888), estimated at $2.5–3.5 million, and Camille Pissarro’s Paysage à Osny, vue de la ferme (c. 1883), estimated at $2–3 million — the latter one of the largest works the artist ever produced.

In December, Ivan Aivazovsky’s marine masterpiece The Naval Blockade of Crete (1897) will be presented at the Old Master & 19th Century Paintings Evening Auction in London, estimated at £2–3 million. Painted in the eightieth year of the artist’s life, it is considered the most important work from the last decade of Aivazovsky’s career ever to come to auction. An interesting detail: the painting once hung in one of Hammer’s own offices and was photographed there alongside President Jimmy Carter in the 1980s.

“Armand Hammer’s footprint in Los Angeles can hardly be overstated. He believed that collecting art comes with the obligation to share it, a conviction that shaped not only his museum but also decades of giving to institutions across this city and beyond. It is fitting that these paintings be celebrated here in Los Angeles before they travel to the wider world,” said Jacqueline Wachter, Sotheby’s vice chair and director of the Los Angeles office.

The foundation’s chairman, Viktor Hammer, the collector’s great-grandson, also underlined the foundation’s new direction: “My great-grandfather was a lifelong student of the arts and a patron who believed that art institutions play an essential role in elevating the lives of individuals, communities and nations. To build on his extraordinary legacy as an advocate for the arts, the Foundation will move from preserving the collection to investing our resources in arts education and institutions,” he said.

Dr. Armand Hammer (1898–1990) was one of the most important collectors of the 20th century and the founder of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. A trained physician who never practiced medicine, he built his fortune in international trade and in the oil industry with Occidental Petroleum, assembling a collection that spanned five centuries of art, from Rembrandt to the Impressionists. He believed that great artists speak the same language for everyone and that their works belong to all people, and in 1987 he was honored with the National Medal of Arts in the United States.