Agnes Gund first encountered Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) in 1967, soon after joining the Museum of Modern Art’s International Council and making her first major art purchase. On a trip to New York, she told art collector Emily Hall Tremaine that she dreamed of owning a Rothko. Tremaine replied: “Let’s go to Rothko’s studio.”
There, at the artist’s recommendation, Gund bought the 1964 canvas. She would later become MoMA’s president and donate over a thousand works to museums. Yet No. 15 was so dear to her that she allowed it to leave her apartment only once, for a 1972 exhibition.
Following Gund’s death last year, No. 15 came to market for the first time as one of three works from her collection consigned to Christie’s New York. Offered in the house’s 20th Century Evening Sale on 18 May, the painting drew more than ten bids from at least three bidders before hammering at US$85 million. The winning bidder was a client of Rachael White Young, senior specialist and co-head of 20th-century evening sales.
With fees, the painting sold for US$98.4 million, becoming the most expensive work by Mark Rothko ever sold at auction. The artist’s previous record was in 2012, when Orange, Red, Yellow (1961) sold for US$86.9 million at Christie’s New York.
Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) was hammered at US$85 million, selling for a record US$98.4 million with fees
Agnes Gund, former MoMA president and philanthropist, in the living room of her New York apartment
Lot 21 A | Mark Rothko (1903-1970) | No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), oil on canvas | The Collection of Agnes Gund (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 1964
236.2 x 175.3 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist by the late owner, 1967
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate on request (Expected to fetch in the region of US$80 million)
Hammer Price: US$85,000,000
Sold: US$98,385,000
No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) is one of only three paintings acquired directly from Rothko that still remain with their original buyers; four are now held in institutional collections, including Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
The record comes just days after another major Rothko crossed the block. Last week, Christie’s arch‑rival Sotheby’s put up Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957) from the collection of Robert Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner turned gallerist. Once installed in the lobby of the Seagram Building, the canvas sold for US$85.8 million with fees in a single-owner evening sale, narrowly missing the artist’s previous auction record.
Mark Rothko’s three most expensive works sold at auction now stand as:
- No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) (1964) | Sold: US$98,385,000, Christie’s New York, 2026
- Orange, Red, Yellow (1961) | Sold: US$86,882,500, Christie’s New York, 2012
- Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957) | Sold: US$85,780,000, Sotheby’s New York, 2026
Orange, Red, Yellow (1961) | 236.2 x 206.4 cm | Sold: US$86,882,500, Christie’s New York, 2012
Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957) | 229.9 x 154 cm | Sold: US$85,780,000, Sotheby’s New York, 2026
Rachael White Young won the lot for her client, paddle 1891
One of America’s most influential art patrons, Gund grew up in a wealthy Cleveland family and encountered art early through classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. After her father’s death in 1966, an inheritance allowed her to begin collecting seriously.
Her first major acquisition was a Henry Moore sculpture from Sidney Janis Gallery. Gund immediately felt a stab of guilt. “How could I be spending this money?” she later recalled. “And that was when I decided to give works of art to different museums.” Three years later, she donated the Moore to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
As she put it, “If I can have it, others should be able to enjoy it.” Over the following decades, she donated more than 1,000 works from her personal collection to MoMA and more than 800 to other museums. Her belief that art should be shared also led her to found Studio in a School in 1977, after New York City cut funding for arts education in public schools.
In 2017, Gund made headlines when she sold Roy Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece (1962), one of the most prized paintings in her personal collection, to hedge fund investor Steven Cohen for US$165 million. The proceeds were used to fund Art for Justice, the initiative she founded to address mass incarceration in the United States.
Roy Lichtenstein, Masterpiece (1962) | Sold from Agnes Gund to Steve Cohen for US$165 million in 2017
Mark Rothko in his 1485 First Avenue studio, New York, 1964
Having joined MoMA’s board of trustees in 1976, she served as the museum’s president from 1991 to 2002, later remaining closely tied to it as president emerita, life trustee, and chair of its International Council. Beyond MoMA, she sat on more than 20 boards, including the Frick Collection and the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Gund collected the art of her own time and made a point of knowing the artists behind it. She often visited artists in their studios and befriended those whose work she collected, including Jasper Johns, Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein, and Julie Mehretu.
At Rothko’s studio in 1967, she had expected an earlier, brighter canvas like those she admired in Tremaine’s collection. Rothko instead brought out No. 15, a canvas he had painted three years earlier, after his palette turned darker and more brooding.
The painting ended up hanging in her living room for decades. She later wrote to Rothko, telling him how beautiful the painting was and how it seemed to transform before her eyes. Rothko called her back and said, “I really like hearing that about my art.”
Mark Rothko | Number 8 (1952) | Private collection, formerly in the collection of Emily Hall and Burton Tremaine
Close-up of No.15
Mark Rothko, 1961
“I’m not an abstractionist,” Rothko once said. “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”
In his search for a universal language of human experience, Rothko moved through urban scenes, mythological subjects, Surrealism, and biomorphic imagery in his early career. He gradually stripped away recognizable figures, and by the end of the 1940s had arrived at the hovering planes of color that would occupy the rest of his career.
Through these fields of colour, Rothko aimed for something close to a religious experience, capable of eliciting deeply personal, emotional, subjective responses. He built them through a meticulous process of layering thin washes of pigment; the translucent surfaces create his signature inner glow and a deep, atmospheric space that seems to draw the viewer in.
The canvases are deliberately massive, intended to envelop the viewer’s field of vision. “A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience,” he said. “To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command.”
Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 (1960) | Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Untitled (Red-Brown, Black, Green, Red) (1962) | Fondation Beyeler, Basel
Untitled (Black, Red Over Black on Red) (1964) | Centre Pompidou, Paris
By the late 1950s, the bright expanses of Rothko’s earlier work were giving way to a darker, more inward palette of maroon, deep green, blue, and violet. The shift began with the famed Seagram Murals, conceived for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York.
Begun in 1958, the commission was one of the most ambitious of his career. Although Rothko accepted the prestigious project, he was hostile to the elite culture it represented from the start: “I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room,” he declared.
Over more than two years, he produced some 30 mural‑scale canvases in a more sombre palette, only to withdraw from the commission and return the payment. Nine of these works were later donated to Tate.
Rothko continued pushing into this darker palette through the early 1960s. In the second half of 1964, he began devoting himself almost entirely to the Rothko Chapel, a project he worked on until his death by suicide in 1970. By the following year, he had largely stopped making independent canvases. Painted in 1964, No. 15 is the largest work from the period remaining in private hands, measuring 236.2 x 175.3 cm.
Seagram Murals at Rothko’s retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton from 2023 to 2024
The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, completed in 1971
Cy Twombly’s Untitled (1961) at Agnes Gund’s New York apartment
Lot 20 A | Cy Twombly (1928-2011) | Untitled, oil, graphite, wax crayon and oil-based house paint on canvas | The Collection of Agnes Gund
Executed in 1961
125.7 x 145.4 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Aujourd’hui, Brussels
- Pierre Janlet, Brussels, by 1964
- Stephen Mazoh & Co., Inc., New York
- Acquired from the above by the late owner, by 1988
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate : US$40,000,000 – 60,000,000
Hammer Price: US$39,000,000
Sold: US$45,485,000
Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale totaled US$490.3 million. Of the 48 lots offered, just two failed to sell, bringing in a sell-through rate of 96%. Together with the S.I. Newhouse sale held the same evening, the auctions realized a combined US$1.12 billion – only the second time in auction history that a single night of sales has crossed the US$1 billion mark.
The other two works offered from the Gund collection were Cy Twombly’s Untitled (1961), painted in Rome four years after his permanent move there, and Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (Medici Princess), a Surrealist-inspired assemblage box created around 1948.
Gund acquired the Twombly shortly before the artist’s landmark retrospective opened at MoMA in 1994. Estimated at US$40 million, it hammered at US$39 million and sold for US$45.5 million with fees. Together, the three works realized US$150.8 million.
Lot 19 A | Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) | Untitled (Medici Princess), wood box construction—wood, printed paper collage, paint, glass, metal, mirror, cork, marble, feather, colored aluminum foil and thread | The Collection of Agnes Gund
Executed circa 1948
44.5 x 27.9 x 11.4 cm
Provenance:
- Tony Curtis, Los Angeles, acquired directly from the artist, by 27 February 1964
- Acquired by the late owner, by 1980
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate : US$3,000,000 – 5,000,000
Hammer Price: US$5,600,000
Sold: US$6,907,000
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 24 A | Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) | Anxious Girl, Magna and graphite on canvas
Painted in 1964
91.4 x 66 cm
Provenance:
- Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
- Horace and Holly Solomon, New York, by October 1968
- Mayor Gallery, London
- Private collection, London, 1984
- Waddington Galleries, London
- Acquired from the above, 1994
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$40,000,000 – 60,000,000
Hammer Price: US$39,500,000
Sold: US$46,060,000
Lot 23 A | Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) | La femme aux lilas (Portrait de Nini Lopez), oil on canvas | The Collection of Lorinda Payson de Roulet
Painted in 1876-1877
73.5 x 59.8 cm
Provenance:
- Grégoire Balacéano, Paris
- Galerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Paris
- Alexandre Berthier, 4th Prince de Wagram, Paris and Béziers (acquired from the above, 2 June 1905)
- Galerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Paris (acquired from the above, 25 May 1906)
- The Lefevre Gallery (Alex. Reid & Lefevre, Ltd.), London and M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York (jointly acquired from the above, 1 January 1929)
- Joan Whitney and Charles Shipman Payson, New York (acquired from M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, December 1929)
- By descent from the above to the late owner
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$25,000,000 – 35,000,000
Hammer Price: US$24,000,000
Sold: US$28,235,000
Lot 31 A | Andy Warhol (1928-1987) | Double Elvis [Ferus Type], silkscreen ink and spray paint on linen
Executed in 1963
207.6 x 121.9 cm
Provenance:
- Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles
- Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
- Private collection, 1971
- Ileana Sonnabend, Paris
- Mayfair Gallery, London
- Princess Miriam of Johor, London
- Shaindy Fenton, Fort Worth
- Julian and Mary T. Ard, Fort Worth, 1977
- Anon. sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 9 May 2012, lot 27
- Private collection
- Private collection, United States
- Anon. sale; Christie’s, New York, 17 May 2018, lot 9B
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$25,000,000 – 35,000,000
Hammer Price: US$23,000,000
Sold: US$27,085,000
Lot 22 A | Claude Monet (1840-1926) | Pommiers, Vétheuil, oil on canvas | Property from the Collection of Suzanne S. Dixon, Lake Forest, Illinois
Painted in 1878
55.2 x 66 cm
Provenance:
- Gustave Caillebotte, Paris (by April 1879; bequeathed to the French state in 1894 and bequest refused, 1896)
- Martial Caillebotte, Paris (by descent from the above)
- Geneviève Chardeau, Paris (by descent from the above)
- Collection Gadala, Paris
- Wildenstein & Co. Inc., New York
- Acquired from the above by the late owners, February 1969
Estimate: US$6,000,000 – 8,000,000
Hammer Price: US$16,500,000
Sold: US$19,610,000
Lot 25 A | Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) | From the Old Garden No. I, oil on canvas | From the Garden: An Important Private Collection
Painted in 1924
91.4 x 76.2 cm
Provenance:
- The artist
- Harold Diamond, New York (acquired from the above, 1977)
- Louis O’Conner, Austin (acquired from the above)
- ACA Galleries, New York (acquired from the above, 1984)
- Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York (acquired from the above, 1984)
- Private collection (acquired from the above, 1986)
- Spanierman Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the late owner, 2006
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$7,000,000 – 10,000,000
Hammer Price: US$10,800,000
Sold: US$13,055,000
Lot 29 A | Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) | Untitled I, oil on canvas | The Arc of Abstraction: Masterpieces from a Private European Collection
Painted in 1980
203.2 x 177.8 cm
Provenance:
- Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York
- David Pincus, Philadelphia, 1982
- Estate of David Pincus, Philadelphia
- Their sale; Christie’s, New York, 8 May 2012, lot 21
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$9,000,000 – 12,000,000
Hammer Price: US$10,100,000
Sold: US$12,250,000
Lot 33 A | Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) | Cherchez l’aiguille, oil on canvas | The Arc of Abstraction: Masterpieces from a Private European Collection
Painted in 1958
194.3 x 175.3 cm
Provenance:
- Paolo Marinotti, Milan, by 1959
- Private collection, by descent from the above
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2014
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$10,000,000 – 15,000,000
Hammer Price: US$10,000,000
Sold: US$12,135,000
Lot 52 A | Childe Hassam (1859-1935) | Across the Avenue in Sunlight, June 1918, oil on canvas
Painted in June 1918
66 x 91.4 cm
Provenance:
- Grand Central Art Galleries, Inc., New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1943
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$6,000,000 – 8,000,000
Hammer Price: US$8,500,000
Sold: US$10,410,000
Lot 34 A | Joan Miró (1893-1983) | Portrait de Ramon Sunyer (L’Orfèvre), oil on canvas
Painted in Barcelona in 1918
Provenance:
- Galerie La Licorne (Dr. Maurice Girardin), Paris (by 1921)
- Galerie Pierre, Paris (by April 1937)
- Perls Galleries, New York (acquired from the above, August 1939)
- Lee Ault, New York (acquired from the above, October 1939)
- Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired from the above, 15 October 1941)
- Stella and Sydney M. Shoenberg, St. Louis (acquired from the above, 1 November 1950, until at least 1959)
- Stephen Hahn, New York (by 1976)
- Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner, 26 November 1979
Estimate: US$8,000,000 – 12,000,000
Hammer Price: US$7,500,000
Sold: US$9,225,000
Lot 43 A | Andy Warhol (1928-1987) | Details of Renaissance Paintings (Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1482), acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
Executed in 1984
122 x 183 cm
Provenance:
- The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York
- Private collection
- Private collection, Florida, by 2005
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2021
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$5,000,000 – 7,000,000
Hammer Price: US$7,400,000
Sold: US$9,103,000
Lot 36 A | Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) | Morgenstunde, distemper and gouache on canvas | The Arnold and Joan Saltzman Collection
Painted in 1907
97 x 130 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie der Sturm, Berlin (1912, until at least 1924)
- Theodor Ahrenberg, Stockholm and Chexbres; sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 4 December 1968, lot 79
- Hallsborough Gallery, London (acquired at the above sale)
- Fischer Fine Art, Ltd., London (June 1972)
- Benedek Fine Art, New York (1973)
- Anon. sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, 7 November 1979, lot 558
- Acquired at the above sale by the late owners
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$6,000,000 – 8,000,000
Hammer Price: US$7,000,000
Sold: US$8,615,000
Lot 42 A | René Magritte (1898-1967) | L’Embellie, oil on canvas
Painted in 1941
65.5 x 100.2 cm
Provenance:
- Private collection, Brussels (acquired from the artist circa 1950, then by descent, until 1985)
- Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels (acquired from the above)
- Private collection, Belgium (acquired from the above)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2002
Estimate: US$6,000,000 – 9,000,000
Hammer Price: US$5,500,000
Sold: US$6,785,000
Lot 50 A | Alice Neel (1900-1984) | Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia), oil on canvas | The Diane and David Goldsmith Collection (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 1967
99 x 91.4 cm
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Robert Miller Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1984
Estimate: US$1,200,000 – 1,800,000
Hammer Price: US$4,600,000
Sold: US$5,687,000
Lot 35 A | Henri Mastisse (1869-1954) | Nature morte, fougères et grenades, brush and India ink on paper | The Collection of Marilyn Arison (Auction record for an ink on paper work by the artist)
Painted in Vence in 1947
76 x 56 cm
Provenance:
- Pierre Matisse, New York (then by descent)
- Laurie Rubin Fine Art, New York (acquired from the above)
- Private collection, Connecticut (acquired from the above)
- Theodore J. Forstmann, New York (acquired from the above, 2005); Estate sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 2 May 2012, lot 3
- Acquired at the above sale by the late owner
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$1,200,000 – 1,800,000
Hammer Price: US$3,900,000
Sold: US$4,833,000
Lot 45 A | Remedios Varo (1908-1963) | Energía cósmica (Inspiración), gouache on board | Property from the Ovalle Family Collection (Auction record for a work on paper by the artist)
Painted in 1956
31.4 x 30.8 cm
Provenance:
- Jacques de Veyrac, Mexico City
- Florence Van der Kemp, Versailles
- Donato G. Alarcón, Mexico City
- Ricardo Ovalle, Mexico City (acquired from the above, circa 1990).
- By descent from the above to the present owner, 1994
Estimate: US$1,200,000 – 1,800,000
Hammer Price: US$3,600,000
Sold: US$4,467,000
Lot 62 A | Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) | In Advance of the Broken Arm, Readymade: wood and galvanized-iron snow shovel
Conceived in New York in November 1915; this version executed in 1964
Height: 131.2 cm
Provenance:
- Arturo Schwarz, Milan (1964)
- Friedrich Christian Flick, Zurich (acquired from the above, May 2002)
- Hauser & Wirth, New York (acquired from the above)
- Adam Lindemann, New York (acquired from the above, 2017)
- Francis Naumann Fine Art, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner, October 2018
Subject to Third-Party Guarantee
Estimate: US$2,500,000 – 3,500,000
Hammer Price: US$2,300,000
Sold: US$2,881,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Christie’s New York
Sale: 20th Century Evening Sale
Date: 18 May 2026
Number of Lots: 48
Sold: 46
Unsold: 2
Sale Rate: 96%
Sale Total: US$490,301,500