Barney Ebsworth spent 50 years building the greatest private collection of American Modernist art in history. On November 13, 2018, Christie's sold it for $323.1 million. Here is every major work, the stories behind them, and where to see them now.
"In real estate, they say three things matter: location, location, location. For me, collecting art was about quality, quality, quality."
— Barney EbsworthTwo women sit at a table in a Chinese restaurant. Pale winter light floods through the window. A neon sign, half-visible, reads "SUEY." It is the most intimate, most American, most haunting painting Hopper ever made. Barney owned it for decades, loaning it to museums around the world. When the hammer fell at Christie's, the room gasped.
Record for any Edward Hopper painting. Record for any pre-war American artwork.
A monumental Abstract Expressionist masterwork from de Kooning's legendary Women series. Explosive brushwork, primal energy, and the collision of figuration and abstraction. One of the most important de Koonings in private hands. The bidding was ferocious.
Artist auction record at the time of sale.
A brooding view of the East River and the island that held New York's asylum and prison. Hopper's mastery of light and loneliness. Barney owned two of the greatest Hoppers ever painted.
O'Keeffe at her most elemental — the lake, the sky, the birds. This was personal for Barney: O'Keeffe had been the witness at his second wedding. Owning her work was an act of friendship as much as connoisseurship.
Artist auction record.
A blazing, almost hallucinatory response to the military pageantry Hartley witnessed in Berlin before World War I. Bold colors, geometric forms, and the terror of beauty in wartime.
Artist auction record.
The Ebsworth Collection wasn't just a few expensive paintings. It was a comprehensive survey of American Modernism — every major movement, every essential artist, the finest available example of each. Here is every artist represented, with links to explore their work:
The drip painter who changed everything. Pollock's work in the Ebsworth Collection represented Abstract Expressionism at its most radical. Wikipedia ↗
Big Campbell's Soup Can — sold by Barney in 2010 for $23.8M to fund the Tadao Ando chapel. Pop Art's most iconic image, owned and then sacrificed for architecture. Wikipedia ↗
Flags, targets, numbers. Johns bridged Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. His works in the Ebsworth Collection were among the finest in private hands. Wikipedia ↗
The artist who erased a de Kooning drawing and called it art. Rauschenberg's "combines" broke every rule. Barney collected his best. Wikipedia ↗
California light on canvas. Diebenkorn's luminous abstractions were among Barney's favorites. Multiple works sold for millions at Christie's. Wikipedia ↗
Black and white. Monumental brushstrokes. Kline made abstraction feel like architecture. Wikipedia ↗
Jazz, color, and American urban life. Davis painted the energy of the 20th century. Wikipedia ↗
Precisionism — the American response to Cubism. Industrial landscapes made beautiful. Wikipedia ↗
America's first abstract painter. Dove was making abstractions before Europe knew what they were. Wikipedia ↗
The bridge between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Gorky's tragic life produced transcendent work. Wikipedia ↗
Abstract Expressionism's great woman painter. Mitchell's canvases pulse with emotion and color. Wikipedia ↗
Elegies to the Spanish Republic — vast, somber, magnificent. Motherwell painted mourning as monumental form. Wikipedia ↗
The inventor of the mobile. Calder made sculpture move and dance. His work brought levity to any room it hung in. Wikipedia ↗
Pure color, pure form. Kelly stripped painting to its essence — a single color on a shaped canvas. Wikipedia ↗
Portraits that see through the skin. Neel painted the truth of her subjects with unflinching intimacy. Wikipedia ↗
Precisionism and the poetry of American industry. Sheeler made factories look like cathedrals. Wikipedia ↗
Swimming pools, California sun, and the most famous splash in art history. Hockney brought joy to modern painting. Wikipedia ↗
Cakes, pies, lipsticks. Thiebaud painted the sweet surface of American consumer culture with thick, luscious paint. Wikipedia ↗
Also represented: George Ault, Peter Blume, Charles Burchfield, Francis Criss, Suzy Frelinghuysen, William Glackens, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Graves, O. Louis Guglielmi, Gaston Lachaise, John Marin, Claes Oldenburg, Jaume Plensa, Leon Polk Smith, Pat Steir, Joseph Stella, John Storrs, Bob Thompson, and others.
One of Barney's most visible gifts to the public was Echo by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa — a 46-foot tall white fiberglass head that gazes out over Puget Sound from Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park. Barney funded and donated the sculpture. It has become one of the most photographed works of public art in the Pacific Northwest.
The official auction catalog, "An American Place: The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection", is itself a work of art — a comprehensive survey of every lot with scholarly essays, provenance, and exhibition history. It serves as the definitive record of what Barney built.