Big sale in the Big Apple

DFW philanthropist Anne H. Bass’ art collection hauls in $363.1 million at Christie's auction

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Le Parlement, soleil couchant

Monet’s Le Parlement now ranks as the fifth most expensive Monet painting ever auctioned.

Photo courtesy of Christie's

A dozen pieces of art from the collection of the late Fort Worth philanthropist Anne Hendricks Bass fetched a whopping $363.1 million at a recent auction in New York City.

Christie’s auction house initially had forecast the collection would rake in at least $250 million — about $113 million below the actual take. The $363.1 million total works out to an average of almost $30.3 million per piece.

Le Parlement, soleil couchant (The Houses of Parliament, at Sunset), an early 20th century oil painting by Claude Monet, hauled in the most money — nearly $76 million — among the 12 artworks sold May 12. The Christie’s auction house had figured the painting would garner anywhere from $40 million to $60 million.

Monet’s Le Parlement now ranks as the fifth most expensive Monet painting ever auctioned, according to the Artnet Price Database.

Two other Monet paintings, Nymphéas (Water Lilies) and Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, automne (Poplars on the Banks of the Epte, Autumn), sold for $56.5 million and $36.5 million, respectively. Those sale prices exceeded the low end of Christie’s estimates.

Meanwhile, two Mark Rothko oil paintings went for $66.8 million (Shades of Red) and $49.6 million (No. 1). Those sale prices were above the lowest estimates calculated by Christie’s.

At a sale price of $41.6 million, Edgar Degas’ Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (Little Dancer Aged 14) set a record for a Degas work. Christie’s highest sale estimate for the bronze sculpture was $30 million.

Christie’s called the Bass collection “the most significant American collection to come to market this season.” None of the buyers of the 12 artworks were identified.

“The Anne H. Bass collection represented the pinnacle of the artists it contained, the pinnacle of taste, the pinnacle of modern collecting. We were beyond honored to work on the estate’s behalf and gratified that these works and her example inspired collectors around the world just as they have inspired us,” Max Carter, head of impressionist and modern art at Christie’s, says in a news release.

Christie’s announced in March that it been hired by Bass’ estate to auction off the 12-piece collection. The collection came from her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City.

Christie’s has described the collection as an assembly of “masterpieces that was profoundly rigorous yet deeply personal, shaped by her remarkably informed eye and female perspective in a world dominated by male collectors.”

Bass was the ex-wife of Sid Bass, the Fort Worth investor and oil heir whose net worth is estimated at $3.6 billion. She reportedly received a $200 million to $500 million settlement as part of their high-profile divorce in the 1980s.

Anne Bass died of ovarian cancer in April 2020 at the age of 78. A longtime resident of the Fort Worth area, she was an avid supporter of the city’s nonprofits and arts organizations, including The Cliburn, Jewel Charity Ball, Junior League, Texas Ballet Theater, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and Modern Art Museum.

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Season Announcement

'Come find your people' in Echo Theatre Dallas' 2025 season

Photo by Joan Marcus

A scene from the Off-Broadway production of Catch As Catch Can.

The theme for Echo Theatre's 2025 season is family, with the tagline "Come find your people." Echo, if you need a reminder, is the Dallas-based company that solely produces plays written by women-plus.

"We recognize the limiting nature of the binary use of the word 'woman,'" the company explains on its website. "We use the term 'women-plus' to include an expansive and diverse array of people, including those born female, those who identify as women, and those who are gender non-conforming."

“This season, my thoughts have turned to family in all its forms,” says artistic director Kateri Cale. “Every person experiences generations of family expectations, judgements, competitions, celebrations, and disappointments, over and over again. If we're lucky, we experience the fierce love of family too.”

First up is the regional premiere of Catch as Catch Can by Mia Chung.

Double-cast across gender, generation, and race and set in a blue-collar New England town, the drama follows two families — the Irish-American Phelans and the Italian-American Lavecchias — as the prodigal son returns home for a holiday gathering. Two off-stage characters, who are Korean and Korean-American, impact the families as they face the weight of generational expectations.

“With Catch as Catch Can, I wanted the audience’s experience of what they’re watching to mirror that felt by the characters; the character doubling articulates and enhances the propulsion of the play," says Chung in a release about the play's Off-Broadway debut in 2022. "I believe in performance, I believe in the actor’s capacity to inhabit a character to the extent that an audience may stop seeing that the actor is a man, or is Asian, or is 30 years younger than the role they’re playing. The cognitive dissonance is by design.”

It runs February 3-March 8, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Next is OPEN by Crystal Skillman, a queer love story told by an amateur magician, presented during Pride Month.

A woman called the Magician presents myriad tricks for our entertainment, yet her performance seems to be attempting the impossible: to save the life of her partner, Jenny. But is our faith in her illusions enough to rewrite the past? The clock is ticking, the show must go on, and, as impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate.

It runs June 6-21, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Last is El Rey del Pollo, a world-premiere "nuevo comedy" by Anna Skidis Vargas that the playwright describes as "a Shakespearean telenovela that’s loosely based on King Lear, but it’s a lot shorter and a lot sillier."

Reymundo Lear is about to retire from his fried chicken empire, and he is leaving everything to his three daughters. But things aren’t as easy as they seem. Cordelia gets disinherited, and Gisela and Raquel hike the prices. El Rey del Pollo features a hungry old man, essential oils, a giant chicken suit, and all the family drama you can eat.

It runs September 11-27, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

The Echo Reads free play readings will continue next year, and are scheduled for the months of March, April, May and September, October, November.

Season tickets are on sale now at echotheatre.org. Single tickets will be available at a later date.

A fun fact about Echo Theatre productions: Up to 10 free tickets are set aside for every performance and given out on a first-come, first-served basis. Patrons must email the box office directly at reservations@echotheatre.org to participate.

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